Scrambling for Altitude
by starofoberon
Summary: A case fic about domestic terrorists that has for better or worse taken on a life of its own. Team-centric, guest appearances by former agents. I'm calling this my "BAU Boneyard" universe. There will be more stories in this world.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimers**:

The people herein aren't mine except for Chief Jaworski and a few random victims and UNSUBs, and more's the pity.

I really liked Jaworski and I'll probably slip her – and Crowley County – into at least one more story when I have the opportunity. I have received some marvelously twisted suggestions for how to do that.

"Birdhouse in Your Soul" is copyright 1990 by John Flansburg and John Linnell, who comprise the geek-rock group, They Might Be Giants. The lines quoted in Chapter Four meet fair usage standards

[And _Flood_ is the Best. Album. Evah. I'm just saying ... ]

This is set either very late in Season 5, or early in Season 6 before JJ departs.

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter One**

**In Search of Square One**

It all seemed so straightforward at first!

The four girls, aged twelve through fifteen, had all disappeared close by to their own homes in bright daylight. Four of them had gone missing in three months, with precious little forensic evidence. The only other connection was that each family had received an anonymous letter stating that some shadowy group had rescued the girls from inept parenting. "Incomphetence," the letter writer called it, and the misspelling was consistent in all four letters. The most recent girl had been taken two days earlier.

At that point, local law had called in the BAU. The team arrived early on the morning of a crisp and brilliantly sunny Wednesday in mid-October.

The police chief of this modest little town of 14,000 (the entire county boasted only 23,000) was a tiny, raw-boned woman with steel gray curls and the no-nonsense manner of one who had paid her dues for twenty years as a beat cop in Detroit before she "retired" to Crowley County. She had the energy of a Jack Russell terrier and a coffee mug that identified her as a Crazy Cat Lady. Her name was Troy Jaworski.

"Which is probably how I got the job in the first place," she told the BAU team as she helped them to take possession of the conference room she had turned over to them and make it habitable. "Somebody thought Troy Jaworski was a guy. Not that anyone will admit it now."

"Sounds like a football player," Reid suggested.

"My goodness, don't you just say the sweetest things?" Jaworski said dryly. "You're going to turn my head with compliments like that one, cutie-pie."

Reid backed off uncertainly. He didn't always feel comfortable when confronted with sarcasm.

The chief looked at the members of the BAU team. " Are you folks all set up now at the Nightliner Motel?"

"Yes, ma'am," JJ assured her. "Thank you very much."

"Do you still have the letters?" David Rossi asked.

"Sure thing," Jaworski replied, yanking the plugs on two vending machines that offered soft drinks and snacks. "You'll have to get your own goodies, but I figure you'll need the outlets more than you need beverage service. There are power strips in that cabinet. And there's a nice little carryout a block down the road. Mickey D's and Pizza Hut the other way. KFC half a mile to the south. No wireless service here, but I have ultra-high-speed cable and an eight-port router, so I figure you'll probably do fine."

"The letters?" Rossi repeated.

"Untwist your knickers, honey. I'll have them to you as soon as I get this table moved. If you want to pick up the other end, that might happen a bit sooner. Thank you, Mr. Rossi. Have to tell you, I'm a big fan of yours, but I don't play favorites. I have all of Douglas's and Ressler's books, too. Anything to give me a little extra insight.

"OK, here are the letters," she said, handing over four documents in vinyl slipcases. "No fingerprints, no envelopes. All run off on a printer. Generic printer paper you can get from any big box store. Cissy, she's our forensics girl, thinks that they're using real cheap printer ink. For what that's worth. This is a poor county, and ink and toner aren't cheap. And when I say 'they,' I think that I probably mean 'she.' And here's my paperwork on when the documents appeared, and photos of all but the first one still in place on the parents' porches where they appeared."

"You say you probably mean 'she'?" Hotchner asked in a neutral tone as he shuffled through the letters.

"Yes, sir. And I may be wrong, but all of you profiling guys say that when a letter talks mysteriously about 'we,' it's almost certainly from one person, and when someone uses a lot of adjectives and extra detail, it's likely a female. Douglas says-"

Emily Prentiss choked back a giggle at Rossi's look when Chief Jaworski quoted John Douglas to him. Oh, theoretically they were friends and former colleagues, all those retired profilers writing best sellers, but they were competitors now in the cutthroat world of publishing. None of them cared to have the other guys quoted at him.

"Cornsilk happened around here, didn't it?" Spencer Reid asked. He evidently thought a nice change of subject would be good for the emotional temperature of the room. Which just goes to show that even geniuses can have their lapses.

"It did," Jaworski said with a sour look. "Here and up the road a bit. Local thought is that the rest of them are still in the area, just waiting to make another move. But if they're here, they're sure taking their own sweet time about it. I haven't seen so much as a hint of Cornsilk since the raids."

Morgan and Rossi growled, Hotchner snarled, and JJ and Prentiss made disgusted noises. The Bureau's counter-terrorism unit had had Cornsilk in its sights four years earlier, but a small army of Homeland Security people had shown up and bigfooted it so badly that when they did gather Cornsilk in, they only got an estimated twenty percent of them, and none of their leadership or their documents.

It was a sore point, but they were professionals, and they were not about to diss another agency, no matter how incompetent (incomphetent?) its actions.

"Yes," said the chief. "I was pretty disappointed myself."

Reid hunched his shoulders as if to say, _Whoops_.

It was safer to talk about the missing girls. Three were white, one was Latina. Yes, they all went to the same two schools, but there were only two schools for that age range in Crowley County. All four girls were from intact families. Two stay-at-home moms, one working mom, one a weekday volunteer at her church. All lived in small single-family dwellings. Two families owned, two rented. One had four siblings, two had one sibling, and one was an only child. Three were churchgoers (three different local churches) and one was not. All generally got average grades.

None of the four girls was dating, according to parents, school personnel, and their classmates. Two had dark hair. One's hair was medium brown. One was a blonde. One had a dog, one had a dog and a cat, one had ferrets, one had no pets. One was thin. One was plump. Two were of average build. One took piano lessons, one had taught herself guitar, one sang in the choir, and one was in the school color guard. They all did track and field, but athletics was a requirement and track was a popular option among girls.

Two fathers worked at Morley Creosote, but it was the largest employer in the county. It might have been more significant if _none_ of them had worked at Morley.

All of the girls sometimes hung out at Ameri-Skate, a roller rink, and Tippy's, a teen-friendly diner, but so did more than three-quarters of their age-mates. One spent a lot of time online. One text-messaged but didn't care much for computers. Another used the computer for school work, but preferred the family's Wii. The fourth's family had no computer. When she needed one, she used those at the library or at school. No, she usually didn't use her friends' computers. She needed a lot of technical reassurance and she preferred to get it from adult mentors rather than from her peers.

At one point, Morgan groaned, "We're just not catching any kind of break at all on this. Everything about them is either different and insignificant or significant but worthless because almost everyone else does it or goes there."

"Welcome to my nightmare," Chief Jaworski sighed. "I've stayed up all night many nights trying to figure out why these girls were taken, and not their neighbors who are just like them. This is a small town, a conservative town. There isn't much tolerance for, oh, Goth or pagan or-" She ran her hands through her hair. "Being different. Individuality doesn't pay here. But far as I can tell, all of these girls are your basic 'go along to get along' kids."

Emily could sympathize. She had taken eight pages of notes on her legal pad and so far had not been able to splatter any hopeful asterisks along the margins to indicate what seemed to be fruitful lines of inquiry. Not a one.

"All right," Hotchner said, rising to his feet. His tone was brisk, professional, and above all, positive. Anyone would think he brimmed with enthusiasm over promising new leads he had just been handed. This inspired confidence among local law enforcement and victims' families. Prentiss hoped some day to be able to fake it as naturally and smoothly as he did.

He hadn't been made unit chief because he had pretty brown eyes.

"JJ, finish getting us set up here, get us hooked in with Garcia. Reid, work the geographic profile. Pull meteorological reports. Get us some new data. Rossi, Morgan, go talk to the family of the first victim, Bree Ann Baker. Prentiss and I will talk to the family of the most recent victim, Carla Harwell. Chief Jaworski, thank you for your help. Your preparation is impressive."

Five minutes later, Emily climbed in on the passenger side of one of three black SUVs delivered by the closest local FBI field office, some three hundred miles away. "So," she said as she stowed her bag in the back and fastened her seatbelt. "How close are we really?"

Hotchner said nothing while he adjusted the mirrors to his satisfaction. Then he gazed glumly out into the glorious day. "If we do everything right and we pick up a little luck along the way, we may find square one by the end of the week. Look at this," he continued. "Four girls from a small population, but when we drove in, they were all walking to school, no adult supervision, no partner-rule, not the least suspicious when a big black SUV with tinted windows cruised up alongside them. Where's the fear, Prentiss?"

"I see what you're saying – west from here, then we turn at the third intersection – it's one thing to try to keep panic to a minimum. It's another thing to go on without any changes at all. Jaworski hasn't been very proactive about this, has she?"

"She's a good cop," he said. "A good mind for analysis and data gathering. You can tell she's read Rossi's and Ressler's stuff. But a chief has to exercise administrative smarts, too, and work with the public. If all she needs is a little shove in the right direction, JJ will be our best ally. Otherwise - you said third intersection?"

"Yes, a four-way stop at Memphis Road. Then we go north about a quarter-mile, and hang a left on Woodridge."

"Then this is it." He swung the wheel and they drove along in silence until they arrived at Woodridge Drive. Woodridge was a cul-de-sac of new development with four houses constructed so far. Instead of ending with the usual loop or a circle, it ended like the business end of a plumber's friend, with nine marked parking spaces along its front edge.

Emily glanced around. "I wonder how many of the other snatch sites had active construction work going on."

He nodded. "Something to pursue. And something else: This is supposed to be a poor town in a poor county, but they seem to have more new housing starts than a lot of places. Statistically, they're doing better than Arlington is. Huh," he added distractedly. "Most of the Harwells' porch is screened behind those – what are they? Mock orange bushes? And there's a magnolia. This is pretty mature landscaping. It didn't come cheap. Not quite as 'in plain sight' as Jaworski indicated."

"I'll call Rossi," Emily said. "Ask them to make a special note of the foliage at the Baker house."

At the very last instant, as she flipped open her phone, she thought she sensed a change in the shadows, something emerging from behind the shrubbery, but there was not enough time to follow up on it.

The barrel of a gun nudged her between the shoulder blades. "Freeze," a calm voice ordered. "Drop the mobile, and be quiet. Hands on your head and keep facing straight forward. No questions, no protests, and no heroics."

She froze and obeyed, keeping her movements small and slow.

Similar words were being spoken to Hotch, over to her left.

As she complied, she sensed a second person, low and to her right, reaching for her Glock. She chanced a lightning glance in his direction as he disarmed her. From the height and angle of his head, she fixed him as probably five-six, five-seven, Caucasian. Gray knit cap.

_OK. It's a team. Organized. Probably have done this before. Maybe the kid-abductors really are a group?_

She sighed. Only a presence and twenty-three words. Couldn't build much of a profile from that. Practically nothing on the second person and not much more on the first. A male. Almost certainly Caucasian. Definitely taller than she, maybe six-one. And this was either his profession, or in aid of something he considered so important that it might as well be his profession.

Linguistic profile: The G in _facing_ had been light, almost non-existent. Vowels had been not quite Broadcast Standard. Just a little flatter, a little broader. A little to the east of Midwest. Except for the interesting dropped R in the diphthong of _your_. _Yuh_, it had come out. Not _yo_, not _yer_, not _yo-ah_. Not _yeh_. _Hands on yuh head_.

_Boston metro area_, she hazarded. _May be wrong, but I'm gonna go with it._

The gun barrel disappeared and the tall person behind her, whom she mentally named Boston, grasped each of her hands in turn and cuffed them behind her, palms out, just like they taught in the police academies. At Quantico, too, for that matter. She could smell cigarette smoke on the other person, whom she decided to call Smoky.

She heard another set of cuffs being snapped onto Hotch's wrists.

_Calm. Organized. _

_Law enforcement background?_

Boston brought forward a long strip of dark brown corduroy and tied it over her eyes.

There is a popular misconception to the effect that, since when a captor allows you to see him, he is generally planning to kill you, then the opposite must also obtain: that a blindfold means he has no plan to kill you.

It doesn't actually work out that way. There are a lot of reasons for an abductor to blindfold a captive whom he has every intention of killing, including residual guilt feelings, superstition, and the desire to keep the captive disoriented and helpless.

There are disadvantages to knowing too much about criminal behavior.

Another piece of cloth, twisted and roped so it was probably close to an inch in diameter, ran into her mouth and tightly around her head. The disadvantages of that were that it was uncomfortable, that she could not completely close her mouth, and that she would probably drool. The lone advantage was that if her nose got congested – or broken - she would still be able to breathe.

On the last count alone, Emily, who had her share of congestion problems, preferred the strip gag to adhesive tape.

A couple seconds of scuffling noises ensued to her left, then a deep voice from well above her head-level rumbled, "You don't really think you can play me, do you, little man?"

Hotchner gasped a negative into his gag.

"Didn't think so," the deep voice said with a chuckle.

At least six-six, probably taller. She mentally named him Lurch.

Not really enough words to get a fix on his speech pattern. Probably Caucasian, because deep-voiced black men generally had a somewhat richer, more musical tone. It was all in the qualities of their vocal structures. Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones were among the famous examples, but they were just outstanding representatives of a common genetic trait.

And what the hell kind of stupid heroic shit had Hotchner just tried to pull?

"Don't forget the his ankle," Lurch said to his own partner. "Left ankle."

- And it was all that Emily Prentiss could do not to reveal her shock at that command. She could hardly even remember to breathe.

These guys hadn't just conveniently happened to know that a couple people were there to investigate the girls' disappearances. They actually knew specifically _who they were_. Knew Hotchner carried a backup gun in a holster on his left ankle.

_And to think I actually kind of liked that Jaworski bitch, but how could she know about Hotch's backup gun?_

Two cars pulled up. Prentiss was shoved into one, with Boston on one side of her and Smoky on the other. "You'll want to be careful about those cuffs," Boston told her. "There's no double-lock. Lean back hard on them and they'll just ratchet tighter."

She pulled her arms to her left and leaned slightly to the right, keeping her cuffed hands free from getting trapped between the seat and her back. She made no effort to look grateful for the heads-up, although she did hope that someone had also warned Hotch.

Before the doors closed she heard Lurch ordering Hotchner into the other car.

Four abductors, two drivers. At the bare minimum, therefore, six people were involved in this thing, this whatever-it-was. Six people was a pretty huge number for a garden-variety conspiracy. And this didn't have any kind of we-kidnap-young-girls feel to it.

It felt, in fact, more like a resurgent Cornsilk. Immigrant-hating, Muslim-hating, Jew-hating, gay-hating, Federal-agent-absolutely-loathing, powerful and vicious Cornsilk, in hiding in Crowley County for the past four years. This was the kind of thing they had done, sweeping up the objects of their contempt, brutalizing them, then killing them. Arranging their broken bodies in humiliating poses and leaving them in plain sight.

As a warning for those they hadn't gotten to yet.

_Crap._


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Don't own them, yada yada.

Yes, it starts out very dark. Got to get that darkness in before the dawn, even though it always bothers me to torment these characters. Well, usually. Anyway, it did this time.

[Note: I would like to thank my boss cat, Carmelita Pentecost, for her invaluable additions to this chapter, some of which were so well hidden that I only just now found them and backspaced them out.]

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Two**

**The Law of Conservation of Energy**

The car she rode in was old and needed its brakes relined. A low thrumming suggested that its muffler was on its last legs, too. The driver was excellent, though. He – and it had to be a he; Cornsilk preferred their womenfolk barefoot and pregnant – performed his starts, stops, and turns so smoothly she could have been riding in a limousine.

They moved quickly from urban roads to rural ones with rough, noisy joints. There were few stop signs or stop lights, but there were no highway high speeds. There was no conversation, not even directions. The driver and Boston made no sounds at all that she could hear over various engine problems.

The other guy, the one she was calling Smoky, coughed hard and wetly several times, and blew his nose twice. Not a smoker's cough. In Prentiss's experience, smoker's cough was generally dry, unproductive, and came in cascades. Her bet was that Smoky was a much older man, or recovering from bronchitis, or in the early stages of emphysema. Or all three.

The windows weren't open. Sometimes, she caught a hint of a burning smell, as though the driver had the air intake open and it was sucking in air from around the engine block. Her dad, who thought of himself as a classic car aficionado, had owned an old Dodge and an old Plymouth that had done that. Wait, and a Ford, too, so it wasn't just a Chrysler phenomenon.

At one point a vehicle with one of those nosebleed-inducing sound systems rumbled past them, blasting Cowboy Troy's "I Play Chicken With the Train." Well, _that_ couldn't be all that goddamn normal. Worth remembering.

She observed her surroundings in part so she could report them to her teammates when she got out of this, and she would by-God get out of this.

The other reason was also survival-oriented. She had a family friend who had been a fighter pilot in the first Gulf War. Some tactless society matron had asked him once at a party whether he had ever been afraid. There was no time for being afraid, he had replied, not the least bit put out by the question. Not while you were airborne. When you weren't acquiring or nailing a target, you were scrambling for altitude. You saved the fear for when the ordeal was over.

Eventually, the car turned in at a driveway. A garage door was opened electronically from the car, and they entered the garage. When Boston guided her out of the vehicle, she smelled rubber and vinyl. Garden hoses, she decided. Smells like old garden hoses.

_Wait, wait – it's just the one car. Where's Hotch?_

There was the sound of a key in a lock, and they yanked her up a small step and into what had to be a kitchen. It had a tile floor and a fluorescent light buzzed and hummed overhead. The refrigerator was old or its motor was going bad. She smelled melon; cantaloupe, she guessed. Somebody's breakfast.

Because Boston and Smoky were jerking her arms so much, she thought she might reasonably be expected to lose her balance. Next time one of them pulled – by chance it was Boston – she stumbled forward, hyper corrected, and faked falling backwards, hoping to stamp on Smoky's instep.

She got his toes instead, but his little yelp gave her her first measure of satisfaction since this whole mess had begun. And she realized belatedly that Hotch was not the only one pushing the limits a little with she had called "heroic shit."

"Stand still," Boston ordered.

She heard what she realized with dismay was the sound of latex gloves being snapped onto hands. _Why do I think I'm not going to like this?_

Boston unlocked her cuffs and untied her gag and took them away, although the blindfold remained. She stood motionless, not willing to give them the satisfaction of seeing her rub her wrists or the sides of her mouth. The sensation of the latex gloves on Boston's hands was creepy. It made her feel like a corpse, or maybe an interesting collection of evidence.

_Both of which I just may be fairly soon if I don't keep my wits about me and get out of here... ._

"Remove your clothing," Boston said. "All of it. Jewelry, too." He sounded neither lustful nor sadistic. Just - just _businesslike_. "If you think of yourself as facing twelve o'clock, there's a table at your two o'clock position. You can easily throw your clothes onto it from where you stand."

_Wow, way to be creepy and helpful at the same time ..._

She refused to act like a cowering victim. Gathering her nerve, she began undressing, starting with her jacket, her nice mocha Ultrasuede jacket (_and I had better get that back, guys_). She folded it over loosely and pitched it at her two o'clock position with defiant vigor.

Keeping her movements brisk and mechanical, she completed the job. It took a lot out of her not to cringe, not to let her hands slip into positions of modesty. _You have no power to shame me,_ she repeated to herself, standing straight and tall_. _And still she managed to absorb evidence from around her. She now knew that either the kitchen windows were completely covered, or this house was in the middle of nowhere. You just don't strip strange women in your kitchen if your neighbors can see you.

There was no earthly reason for them to perform a complete strip search – and it was performed both more roughly and more invasively than necessary - other than sheer cussedness, as a vehicle to instill terror and humiliation.

She had been presuming she would get her clothing back, but when the process was over, Smoky grabbed her left shoulder and pushed her across the room, through a doorway, and down a hallway with thin, threadbare carpet.

From there they moved into another room to her right with what felt like really inexpensive shag carpet. Across that room, then another door opened. Smoky shoved her into a room so small she almost bounced off the opposite wall. (A walk-in closet? Probably.) Bare floorboards, and against the far wall, her feet found a thin mattress, not more than an inch thick, with old-fashioned ticking. Scratchy. Dirty. Unwelcoming.

The unmistakable sound of a chain-pull on an overhead bulb.

"Sit," Boston ordered.

_I do not want to sit on that nasty, scratchy thing, and if you have in mind what I think you have in mind, I don't want to do _that_ on this nasty old thing, either._

Something thin and whippy – a switch, she thought – came down hard on her right upper arm and she screamed as much in shock as in pain. Her left hand shot over to cover the welt, and nobody stopped her.

"Sit," Boston repeated. "Don't flatter yourself that you're going to be ravished, because you're not."

_OK, he's not only nasty. He's also smart. Articulate. Good vocabulary._

_And a lousy Cornsilk terrorist and I will look forward to cuffing your miserable ass, see how you like it. I'll show you strip-search, you fucking inadequate redneck bastard._

Holding that image in her mind to give her strength, she sat down on the mattress, pulling her knees up tight and hugging them.

Something touched the side of her neck. "Do you know what that is?"

"A switch," she answered sullenly.

"And what is its purpose?"

She considered and discarded several answers before she settled on,"So you think you can make me do what you want me to do."

Another whack, across the fronts of her legs. "Mind your tongue, little girl."

Even as she mewled, she thought,_ Little girl. And Lurch called Hotch little man. Have some size issues, guys, don't you?_

Pieces of cloth hit her legs.

"Put on your pants and shirt," Boston said. "Then stand up and face the wall with your hands behind you."

Her fingers identified her slacks and the sleeveless blouse she had worn under her jacket. Nothing else. Evidently she would be going commando. She pulled on her pants and slipped the blouse over her head. Then she struggled to her feet and put her hands behind her. Boston cuffed her again, but there was no gag.

_Well, that's interesting._

"Now sit back down and be quiet, or I'll have to gag you again."

She did so.

She heard the scraping of two chairs, one to her left, and one far to her right. The room was probably six to eight feet wide and four feet deep. Boston sat down on the chair to the left and Smoky departed, closing the door behind him. She thought she could probably get a fix on where Boston's head was. Was it worth it to raise her head and smile at him, just so she had the sensation of control?

_Probably not._

A few minutes later the door opened again. Emily cleared her mind and prepared for whatever Cornsilk would throw at her, but what actually bounced off the wall only two feet from where she sat was Aaron Hotchner.

"Sit," Lurch said.

At the farther end of the little mattress, Hotch shifted positions. After a few more seconds, he gasped.

"Do you know what that is?"

With almost no hesitation at all, and in a remarkably soft voice, Hotch replied, "Yes."

"And what is it?"

"Proof that you're in charge. That you have the power to enforce your will." He could have been telling them what he had eaten for breakfast.

"Then shouldn't you start acting like you understand my power?"

"Yes, sir," he said. "I'm sorry, sir." As if it simply wasn't important enough to fight about. And for him, maybe it wasn't.

"What do you know?" Lurch said to Smoky, in a more conversational voice. "The Man was right. He isn't as dumb as he looks."

Emily's eyes widened behind her blindfold. And who was the Man, and how had he come to know Hotch? Or was that the side trip the other car had taken – to show off their new captive to the Man?

A whisper of something in the air. She flinched in preparation for the blow – to her, to Hotch, she wasn't sure – but it was Hotch's clothing. Lurch said, "Don't make a sound. Put on your pants and shirt, then stand and face the wall, hands behind you."

He climbed to his feet. (What _is_ it with guys standing up to get dressed? Is it some kind of atavistic must-be-prepared-for-battle thing? Or do they connect it subliminally with peeing standing up?) She heard his even breathing, the padding of his bare feet on the floorboards. She heard his zipper, heard him sigh heavily as he turned to face the wall. Heard the snick of the cuffs going on his wrists. He seemed so calm.

She knew he was doing the right thing, but she wondered whether he knew she was there. Would he find it easier, or more difficult, to face Cornsilk knowing she was beside him?

Would either of them live long for it even to matter?

She cleared her throat, just a little.

"Oh, hey," he said in that same barely audible voice. "How are you holding up?"

Followed immediately by a whistling sound and a strangled scream, and then three more.

"Did anyone tell you to talk?" Lurch asked.

"No, sir," Hotch wheezed, his voice throbbing with pain. "I'm sorry, sir." Then, unexpectedly, "It wasn't her fault, sir."

"Sit down," Lurch said, "and shut up."

Hotch obeyed, and Lurch walked over to the other chair. In a way, Prentiss's name for him had been inaccurate. The butler from the Addams Family was tall and thin. Lurch's tread made the floorboards bend beneath his feet. He was packing some serious weight.

She dimly recalled someone – Rossi? – telling her that in context with some of his advanced hostage negotiations training, Hotch had been put through some fairly drastic captivity scenarios. She had to presume that he knew what he was doing and the risks he was taking, even his choice to talk to her. It was all about picking your battles, Rossi had said. Saving your energy for the things that mattered.

And encouraging a team member mattered to Hotchner. It always would. The condition of his ego and his body both definitely ranked below the wellbeing of his team among his priorities.

They sat there, the four of them, for what had to be at least two hours. Sometimes Prentiss could hear the creak of Boston or Lurch shifting in his chair. Not surprisingly, Lurch's chair protested more loudly than Boston's. Hotchner could have been reading an absorbing book. He neither moved nor made a sound that she could discern. If she hadn't known what kind of man he was, she would have assumed he was asleep.

She was just starting to wonder whether it was permissible to speak up if you had to pee when there was a banging and slamming, and heavy feet thundered down a distant hallway. Boston and Lurch both rose from their chairs.

"I'll go," Boston told Lurch. "Want a Coke when I get back?"

"Yeah, sure." The chair complained as he sat back down.

Boston left the room, shutting the door behind him. These guys were meticulous, she decided. Jerks, but very careful jerks.

Somewhere in the house, voices were raised. After a few more minutes, Boston opened the door and stood in the doorway. "They came down on Hawthorne," he said, with concern in his voice.

"How in the Sam Hill could anyone-"

"We don't know yet. Bobby's in the wind and nobody's seen Link. I'm supposed to park her over at Chestnut until things cool down."

"And him?"

Boston's voice was cold. "Man wants him right now. Not gonna waste any time."

Lurch got up again and walked over to where Hotchner sat. "Man wants to do you now." He sounded way too happy about it. "Lucky you, he's in a hurry so you may miss out on some of the usual fun."

"Is he going to kill me?" Hotch asked. Still too calm. Freaky calm, even for a top profiler.

"Bet your ass," Lurch rumbled. "Gonna take you apart."

There was a pause, and Hotchner said, "All right. But – can I say goodbye to my- to, um, my partner?"

"You dawg, are you balling her?"

Hotch maintained his dignity. "May I tell Emily goodbye?"

Lurch chuckled and sat back down on the chair. "Knock yourself out, little man. But don't take more than a minute, and don't do anything I wouldn't do."

He shifted closer to her. "Emily."

She matched his quiet, steady tone. "Aaron."

"You need to know," he said, and his voice seemed weary but deliberate, "that you're the best thing that's happened to me since I lost Haley."

_I so do not want to hear this._

"The most profound experience in my life was that first night," he continued, "when we were lying there naked together in the hotel room, reading the Song of Songs to each other and watching slasher movies. My whole life changed."

Two seconds of _what-the-fuck_, then a rush of comprehension. It was code, for her or for the team, she wasn't sure. Or both.

He could be a jerk and a martinet, but he always put the team and the case first, and he was almost as smart as Reid. And he didn't make many mistakes. And she was prepared to trust him to the ends of the earth.

_So, yes. The story is that I have a powerful and meaningful relationship with Aaron Hotchner. Now give him something else to work with._

She tried to remember some really nice date she'd been on in the past couple years. She was careful to keep her lies as close to the truth as she could. She had no idea how long she would be a prisoner here, but she was pretty confident that they had law enforcement savvy. Lies close to the truth were not only easier to remember - they could even fool a polygraph sometimes. OK, she decided, that date last spring with Scott from the gym.

She felt that her voice should break just a little if she were saying good-bye to the love of her life. Then it turned out that her voice broke anyway, because Aaron Hotchner was a straight-up guy and he didn't deserve to be abused and executed by a bunch of hate-crime assholes.

Fighting tears, she managed to say, "And the time we walked all the way home from Il Porto in the rain, making out in doorways and singing Brad Paisley songs."

"Yes," he whispered, almost eagerly. "Yes! And 'Birdhouse in Your Soul.'"

_What the hell is 'Birdhouse in Your Soul'? Must be important. _

"'Birdhouse in Your Soul,'" she repeated with a sigh, as though it were a magical memory. "Of course. And Kenny Rogers." That was lame, but the spectrum of Scott's musical tastes ranged from alt-country to classic country. He didn't even know any Springsteen.

She was prepared to specify that they had been headed for her place, since Hotch's would have been a long haul on foot from Alexandria. (Scott's apartment had been only eight blocks away.)

But nobody asked.

"Aaron, you'll be OK," she said.

"I know."

"Where – where did they hit you?"

"Just my hands. I'm fine."

She wondered whether he expected her to kiss him.

"That's enough of the bye-byes," said Boston. "Your girlfriend's leaving now. Come on." He pulled Prentiss to her feet and led her from the room.

"Emily!" Hotch called after her. His voice seemed not so much desperate as determined. Encouraging. That goddamn positive tone that set victims' families at ease and filled local law enforcement with confidence. "You're a strong woman. You'll get through this."

"Yeah, but he won't," Lurch called with a snicker.

_I really, really hate that man._

She stumbled down the hall, hustled along by Boston, through the kitchen and into the garage. Instead of pushing her into the car, Boston put her gag back on her. Or Hotch's. Somebody's gag. Then they stood there until a vehicle pulled into the drive and tapped its horn twice.

The garage door rose. Boston and someone else swathed her in an old canvas tarp, wrapping it round and round her body. Then they picked her up and deposited her on something metal. Then she hear the tailgate snap into place and she knew where she was. She was in the back of somebody's pickup truck.

On her way to whoever or whatever Chestnut was.

The pickup driver could have used a few lessons from the guy who had driven the car earlier. This guy slammed on the brakes at the last possible minute, took corners on two wheels, and accelerated as if the hounds of hell were on his tail. Prentiss was bounced around in the back in her canvas wrappings. Th tarp smelled so strongly of gasoline and paint that when her face got too close to it, the fumes made her head swim.

With part of her mind, she tried to follow the direction of the truck. With part she tried to keep from being bounced to death. (At least the gag kept her from biting her tongue.) With the rest of her mind, she tried to review everything she had heard in the past fifteen minutes.

They landed on Hawthorne. Bobby's in the wind. Nobody can find Link. Keep her at Chestnut until things cool off.

Then those baffling images from Hotchner of them naked and watching slasher movies. And Song of Songs. (_Was that a movie? No, a book. We read it, right?_) And "Birdhouse in Your Soul."

Incomprehensible images, but if they hadn't been crucial, he would not have wasted time engineering that whole scene so he could pass them along.

_If they kill him, I will follow them to the ends of the earth. I will twist their nasty heads off their nasty bodies and pound them right up their nasty butts._

Abruptly the pickup driver stood on his brakes. With the engine still on, he got out and ran to the back, where he loosened the tailgate and started to yank on her tarpaulin.

He wasn't alone, she discovered.

"Just take that end," one voice panted, "and pull."

"Like a fuckin' burrito," another voice replied. "Just pull it clear, and-"

Awkwardly, inelegantly, she was dragged from the back of the truck and set on the ground, still trapped in the canvas shroud.

"Shouldn't be doing this," the first voice said, "They're gonna kill your ass."

"Well fuckin' fine," the other said. The one who had referred to her as a burrito."You drive the fuckin' truck through a fuckin' roadblock with a body in the back."

"She ain't a body yet."

"She will be in a minute or two. Hey, bitch," Burrito-boy said, apparently addressing Prentiss, "Do everybody a favor and break your fuckin' neck on the way down."

He shoved and she rolled and bounced down a steep slope, hitting rocks and stumps and landing way too often on those goddamn single-lock handcuffs, and she figured if she didn't die, she would wish she had.

She fell and slid and bounced for what felt like half an hour but was probably thirty seconds, and landed hard on what felt like large gravel.

Before she could start to struggle out of the tarp, a voice said in the unmistakable tones of a junior high school girl, "Omigawd, Lorena, lookit! Lookit! It's a body!"

And Lorena said, "Cool!"


	3. Chapter 3

OK, this will be six chapters, not five. I seriously underestimated how many words it would take me to get from point B to point C. Tomorrow, I'll correct all the notes I have already uploaded.

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Three**

**Rolling Restart**

Meanwhile, back at the police station, another kind of hell had broken loose.

Derek Morgan and Davis Rossi were literally in the doorway, the keys jingling in Morgan's fingers, when Chief Jaworski called them back, her brows knit into deep furrows. "We may have a change in the situation here. Will you all just hang back for a few minutes before you leave? And does any of you specialize in talking to children?"

"We all talk to children," Morgan said. "What's the story?"

"It's Randall Walker. He's twelve, the younger brother of Kristi Walker, the third girl to go missing. The principal of his school brought him here. Randall claims that his mother has been talking to Kristi on the phone."

Morgan's right eyebrow arched. "For real, or is this a distraught mother just–"

"I can't say for sure. It feels real to me, but I'm fond of Randall. He's a very intelligent young man. That's why I want one of you to do the talking." She fiddled with the back of one of the vending machines she had unplugged and freed several cans of soda from its interior. "Still cold, too. Let's hope we have a flavor he likes."

"Reid?" Morgan said to Spencer Reid, who sat only a few feet from the door. "Did you hear that?"

"I can do it, sure," Reid said, rising to his feet. His wore his tie loose and his sleeves rolled. He would look adult, but not intimidating.

Randall Walker was a plump and solemn-faced young man with impressively thick lenses in his glasses. His pale hands twisted together in his lap. When Reid entered Jaworski's office with the chief, an older woman in a knit dress – the school principal – and Jaworski's desk clerk were looking at the boy with politely confused expressions.

"Then on my way back to Camp Taurajo – oh, hi, Chief Jaworski."

"Taurajo," Jaworski repeated. "You run Hordies?"

He perked up a little. "Well, yeah. 'Orcs are cool, but Taurens rule.'"

"How about Blood Elves?"

His lip curled. "B.E.'s are all faggots."

"Randall?" his principal warned.

"Well, they're just – gay," he insisted.

Jaworski set the cold soft drink cans on her desk and said to everyone, "Help yourselves." Then she smiled companionably at Randall and said, "I don't know about that. I have a Belf Hunter that could probably kick your cow's butt."

Randall made a scoffing sound and said, "Yeah, you wish!" but the tension had left him and he seemed substantially more confident."Who's your pet?"

"A Stranglethorn gorilla named Sadie."

"Cool."

Although Reid wasn't a fan of the game, he recognized enough of the terms to understand that Randall (and apparently Troy Jaworski) played World of Warcraft.

"Randall, this is Dr. Reid. He's with the FBI. The FBI is here to help us bring those girls, including your sister, home safely. Will you tell him what you just told us?"

"Yes, ma'am." He looked back and forth dubiously between Reed and the chief a few times. Then he caught sight of Reid's holstered gun, and he seemed to gain confidence. He selected a Dr. Pepper, pried the tab open, and wrapped his hands around the can rather than drinking it.

Speaking slowly but without pauses in a voice dulled by dismay and confusion, he said, "Last night, real late, I heard my mom on the phone, but I thought she was just talking to herself, you know, 'cause she was saying Button-Button, that's what she calls Kristi, but then I got nailed by one of those rolling restarts so I'm tippy-toeing to the kitchen to get some cake and I see she's on the phone in her bedroom, saying, 'Don't worry, Button-Button, you'll be home soon,' and then Dad comes down the hall and she's all 'gotta go, Button,' and Dad's yelling and he's, like, 'I told you not to call her anymore,' and Mom's crying and she's like, 'but she called _me_, Reggie.'"

Randall took a long swig of soda. "And I'm like, wait, she's kidnapped but she's calling you and you're calling her? That doesn't make any sense. But I didn't say anything to my folks because I was supposed to be asleep and if they catch me awake after curfew they cut my WoW time down to the bone, and, man, it's brutal, but this morning it was really bothering me so I told Mrs. Ashley and she sent me to Miss Pickens – and here I am. Is my mom in trouble?"

Three minutes later, as Reid and the chief hustled back to the BAU room with a list of all of the Walkers' land line and mobile numbers, he said, "Rolling restarts?"

"When they reset the realm you're playing on because of a software problem," Jaworski said. "There are dozens and dozens of realms. Sometimes only a few of them need to be reset. You're usually off line for no more than two or three minutes, then it's up again. It's most likely on Tuesday afternoon or evening, because early Tuesday morning the entire system is shut down for patches and maintenance."

And last night had been a Tuesday night. "Exactly what time was that restart last night?"

"I don't know. I didn't play last night. I was going over the arrangements for you-all. And I don't have any toons on Onyxia anyway. I don't do PvP. You can probably get the exact time data directly from Blizzard."

"What do you think?" Morgan asked.

"I'll know in a minute." Reid slipped back into his chair and gazed through cyberspace at Penelope Garcia on his screen. "I need some magic," he said.

"Then you've come to the right place," Garcia purred.

Leaning against the wall, recognizing that he was second in command and the first in command should know about this, Morgan thumbed speed-dial to Hotchner's phone. He got voice mail. Undeterred, he hit Prentiss's number. Voice mail there, too, which was unusual. They would have their phones set to vibrate, but no matter how engaging or alarming their conversation with the Harwells was, one of them, probably Prentiss, should have checked to see that it was from him and picked up.

"So," he said to Rossi, "if Randall heard everything right and interpreted it right and repeated it right – and that's three separate places for a foul-up – then Mrs. Walker gets phone calls from Kristi, and she also makes calls to Kristi, so she knows what number to call her at. And her husband knows about it. And rather than tell us, or tell Jaworski, he's told his wife not to call Kristi anymore."

"Morgan," Reid said, his eyes locked on his laptop monitor, "the restart for Onyxia was at one-ten AM and was to clear up some, er, instance-access problem. It lasted for one-hundred-thirty-three seconds. There was a call to the Walkers from a cell phone at twelve-fifty, and it ended at one-twelve. That's consistent with Mr. Walker ordering her to hang up within a minute or two after Randall got bumped off line, while he was still in the kitchen."

"What do we have on the number?"

"Garcia's on it."

Morgan tried their colleagues one more time, then looked around for Chief Jaworski. "Hotchner and Prentiss aren't responding," he said. "Call the Harwells, please, and ask them to call in. We don't want them operating blind if this Walker thing pans out."

"They could be lost," JJ said.

"They got straightforward directions," Rossi said. "And Prentiss, in particular, couldn't get lost if she tried to."

"I'm getting no answer," Chief Jaworski said. "And that bothers me. The Harwells are house-poor. They put everything they had into buying that new house and getting the best landscaping they could. For the next few years they'll be living on the cheap, all beans, mac-and-cheese, and ramen noodles. They have basic land line service. No voice mail, not even call waiting. Nobody is answering."

"Cell phone that called the Walkers last night belongs to Geraldine Emsworth," Reid said, still in close communication with Garcia. "That number also called the Walkers once last week, also after midnight. The Walkers' land line has called the Emsworth cell number four times in the past month, all of them also after midnight. Never from their cells phone. They haven't called Emsworth on either of their cells."

"The cells belong to Kristi and Reggie, the dad," Jaworski said. "I hope that I haven't overstepped my authority, but I just asked Fred to run past the Harwells and see whether your agents' vehicle is present."

"No, no – that's a good idea," Morgan told her. "Thank you."

"Geraldine Emsworth," Jaworski said, gazing across the room at nothing. "She's the Baker girl's aunt. By marriage, anyway. She married Bree's mother's brother. I wonder whether the Bakers are talking to their daughter, too."

"Hey, Garcia," JJ said, "see if there are any recent connections between the Emsworth cell phone and any of the phones that the Bakers, the Herreras, and the Harwells own." She paged through a file folder and began reciting numbers to the tech analyst.

"On it, Jayj."

Jaworski leaned against the far wall and engaged in intense conversation with the collar of her uniform shirt, where the mic for her radio was clipped. "Where's Jason? All right, hold the fort there. We'll be out momentarily."

"There's a problem, ladies and gentlemen," the chief said in a voice almost distracted with concern. "Your people's car is there, and there's a cell phone on the front lawn of the Harwells', but nobody's home at the Harwells or at any of the other three houses on the street. The only other car present is Jimmy Decker's. He's away at college, can't have a car on campus, so he parks it at his folks' place."

All four of the remaining BAU agents leaped up immediately, ready to pile into their cars.

"Somebody has to stay here," Morgan said firmly. "JJ, just keep on keeping on. Dave, I need you here more than I need you on the scene. As fast as Garcia comes up with data, look for new directions to go. Reid, you're with me. Chief, I'd appreciate it if you rode with us."

"I'll be happy to."

Still on her feet, Jareau looked at her phone. "The cell phone the officer found? It's Emily's," she said. "I dialed Emily and got the officer on site."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

As Morgan, Reid, and Jaworski left in the second of the BAU's SUVs, the first of two cars driven by Cornsilk members stopped just off the side of a country road. The man whom Prentiss mentally named Lurch, and whom Hotchner had mentally named Asshole, took Hotch's shoulder and pulled him out of the car. Asshole really liked inflicting misery, and he seemed to know where every nerve ending was and how best to jab his thumb into it. He dragged Hotch, who stumbled over the uneven ground, across an open area with weeds that brushed halfway up his shins.

"It's time to meet the Man," Asshole told him enthusiastically. "I think you'll like him." With that kind of recommendation from that kind of man, Aaron started preparing himself mentally for worst case scenarios.

They climbed up three concrete steps, walked across a broad porch, and Asshole knocked on a heavy door. Someone opened the door and Asshole nudged Aaron across the threshold.

"Well, well, well," a voice sing-songed, and Hotchner staggered backward. He actually thought for an instant that his legs were going to give way. This was way worse than any worst-case scenario he had anticipated, as completely unexpected and counter-intuitive as learning that your UNSUBs had escaped on flying, fire-breathing dragons.

"This is the one, right?" said Asshole's partner, whom Hotch had not given a name. He just thought of him as Asshole's pet thug. Pet Thug raised Hotchner's chin and turned his head slowly this way and that.

"Yes indeed," the voice said.

A finger traced along Hotchner's cheekbone, and a head bent close to his. "Hello, Aaron," the voice breathed in his ear. "Surprised? There's so much you don't know about me. But I can't blame you; it took me years to learn it myself."

_No. _

_No, no, no, no, no._

_This cannot be happening._

Hotchner had lost any kind of analytical function. His brain had slammed to a screeching, singe-the-brake-linings halt, burning rubber all the way across the plane of his reality. It was all he could do to stand up. He was grateful for the blindfold that hid the fury in his eyes and for the gag that prevented him from blurting anything foolish.

Or pitiful.

"That's all," the voice said. "Take him away. I have some important matters to deal with."

"What do you want us to do with him?" Asshole asked.

"I don't give a crap. Whatever amuses you. Just leave some for me. We still have a score to settle. No, wait. Do the strip search now, then take him to the house. I'll enjoy watching."

Aaron did not do emotions well. He was dizzy and disoriented, sick with hatred. He thought that his thundering heart was going to burst right through his sternum.

In a way, he wished that it would.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

The stillness on Woodridge proved to be less eerie than it seemed at first. The absence of the Harwells was still a problem, but both of the Wigginses worked and the Deckers were on an anniversary cruise. Mrs. Anderson was at work. Her husband was at the Nightliner Motel with an attractive – and possibly underage – girl.

On the other hand, Chief Jaworski just stood and stared at a small chalk image on the Harwells' front door. "Officer Alberts," she said with a dangerous edge to her voice, "why didn't you mention this?"

"The letter **S**?"

"There are three of them."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"You can't be that new. Where have you seen those letters before?"

"Oh my God," Fred Alberts whispered. "I just – I just, Cornsilk was gone. It is, isn't it? I mean, I know you didn't get all of them, but they've moved away, haven't they? Because they haven't done anything here in years–"

Jaworski shook her head slowly. "I'm sorry, agents," she said. "Cornsilk seems to be back. And they seem to have both the Harwells and your team members."

Derek Morgan's phone began to vibrate and he snatched it up eagerly, hoping to see the Hotchner ID on the screen. Instead, he saw Rossi's.

"We've had a couple visitors here," Rossi said. "Someone apparently left a note thumb-tacked to the door of the station. Then someone else tried to read it. We have _his_ ass on ice. But you're not going to like–"

"Cornsilk," Morgan groaned. "Yeah, Reid and I are looking at one of their calling cards here, too. They have the Harwells and Hotch and Prentiss."

"Shit," Rossi exploded. "They don't have the Harwells. The Harwells were lured out of their home this morning by someone who claimed to have a message from their daughter. They're on their way here, to the station. Some friend of the chief's is bringing them in."

"We're on our way," Morgan said. "I'm asking the Staties to handle some of the forensics, because Jaworski only has the one techie, and she's swamped." He glanced over at the chief. "Ready?"

"Ready."

Once they were on the road, Morgan said, "All right, Cornsilk hates–"

"Pretty much everybody," Troy Jaworski said. "Although they have favorite targets."

"The groups Cornsilk hates," Reid said, "I have Muslims, Jews, gays, immigrants, and federal agents. Anyone else?"

"They don't much care for Mormons or Catholics, either. Nor feminists, nor the ACLU. And rumor is that a few years ago, they shopped around, tried to get someone to take out that, oh, I had his name and it's just gone. With that place down in Alabama? The anti-hate-crimes people?"

Reid said, "Morris Dees and the SPLC?"

"That's the one."

"Chief, can you give us an idea of how many you have in your population who are at risk from Cornsilk?"

Jaworski removed her cap and leaned her head back. "Sure. The obvious ones, of course, are you folks. Otherwise? No illegal immigrants that I know of for sure. I'm sure there were some among the seasonal workers, but they moved on a couple weeks ago. No Muslims, not even Black Muslims. Or if we have them, they've kept it very, very quiet. Three households of Jews. Two elderly couples and a young man. I don't know whether they're observant. The nearest synagogue is forty miles north of here.

"Gays. Oh, Lord, who knows? This isn't a friendly town for anyone who's different, so most of them keep it on the down low. We have a couple tranny hookers who work the interstate. We have a couple well known local businessmen who are on, you could say, the flamboyant side, but I don't know anyone who knows anyone that either of them has slept with. And they aren't each other's friends, either. I'm not saying we don't have gays and lesbians. I'm saying we don't have any high profile ones that I'm aware of. And Cornsilk prefers them high-profile.

"Oh, dear," she said suddenly. "Chipsey."

"Chipsey?"

"My goodness, yes. Chipsey. The nature photographer?"

"He's gay?"

"I don't think anyone knows for sure what Chipsey is, including Chipsey. You see him in restaurants with men, with women. Alone, in groups. Frankly, I would recruit him if I could. He's very observant. Doesn't miss a thing. But what can a small town cop-shop offer to a world-traveling photographer?"

"And Chipsey's name?"

"Uh, McClintick. Beverley McClintick. He's young to be retired. Mid-forties, I think, but he lives comfortably, so his life must have been good to him. Average height, average weight, long gray hair, moves like a panther. Very graceful, very noticeable. Charismatic. Wonderful hips. I've never seen him dance, but I'll bet he's red hot at it."

Chief Jaworski paused and glanced away from Morgan, blushing faintly, but Reid saw it.

"And you see Chipsey as a potential target for Cornsilk because he may be gay?" Derek asked.

"No, Agent Morgan. Like I said, I don't know Chipsey's orientation. Whatever he is, he's discreet about it. No, I'm concerned about him because a young man that I know is a Cornsilk sympathizer got drunk last year and jumped Chipsey at the Sterling Inn." Chief Jaworski smiled, as at a particularly pleasant memory. "And Chipsey beat the crap out of the boy. Damn near killed him. Impressive, but it did nothing to endear him to the Cornsilk supporters among the population."

Reid opened his phone and made a connection. "Hey, Garcia, you're on speaker. I need anything you have on a Beverley McClintick, it's a male, professional photographer, apparently under the name Chipsey."

"No, no," Jaworski said. "Chipsey's just a nickname. And 'Beverley' ends in -ey. Just so your girl knows it."

"OK, forget that. He did his photography under his own name. And 'Beverley'–"

"Oh, 'your girl' heard that just fine," Garcia said frostily. "And here we go. Five-nine, one-sixty, wears contacts, and is an organ donor."

Garcia sent four photos to Reid's phone, showing a man in his mid-forties. His prematurely gray hair was tied back in a thick wavy ponytail. He had a broad forehead, exquisitely arched eyebrows, and cold blue eyes. In most of the pictures, he seemed to find something secretly amusing.

Reid turned his phone so Jaworski could see it. "Yes, that's Chipsey," she said.

"His name is actually John Jay, that's J-A-Y, not an initial, Beverley McClintick," Garcia said, "as in the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And the College of Criminal Justice. Born January of '67 in Seattle, which makes him 43 now. Young to retire, but the CV on his web site looks solid. There are links to his work featured in _Nature_, in _Geographic_. Two coffee-table style art books, one sold quite well, the other not so well. Still available on Amazon and from his own site. He's had gallery exhibits. I'm working on his references now. I'll be right back at you.

"No, wait, wait, honey, JJ tells me that Chipsey McClintick is the person who is bringing in the Harwell family. Yes, he identified himself to Rossi as both Chipsey and Bev McClintick."

"Tell her we're only three minutes from the station," Jaworski said. "And tell her to untwist her knickers about me calling her your girl."

"You may consider them untwisted, chief," the voice on the speaker phone said. "For the moment."


	4. Chapter 4

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Four **

**Reach Out and Bust Someone**

The part of the skill set for an FBI media liaison specialist that people most overlooked was a healthy relationship with things technical. At the police station, JJ Jareau had been channeling her inner geek. She now had John Jay Beverley McClintick's driver's license photo projected onto a large freestanding whiteboard. Later, other images would go up, but at the moment Chipsey's was most easily available.

Rossi sat hunched over a legal pad, drawing lines and squiggles and arrows. "It's that damn six degrees of separation," he said. "Everybody's just a couple degrees from Cornsilk – and that's just with the information we already have."

"Small towns," JJ sighed. Although she meant it in sympathy, she actually enjoyed it, too. For all their big-city professions, she and Will were both small-town kids at heart. Like anything else, small town life was a trade-off. Knowing that your neighbors had your back could be comforting. You traded off a little privacy, but it paid off in intimacy.

You pays your money and you makes your choice, as the saying goes, and recently JJ had begun to wonder a lot about whether she had made the right choices for herself, her developing relationship with Will, and their son Henry.

Chief Jaworski's desk clerk tapped on the door jamb. "The Harwells are here," she said, her eyes drawn to the image on the whiteboard. "And Mr McClintick, too. Is he, er, a suspect?"

Simultaneously, JJ said "Not at this time," and Rossi said, "We don't know enough to make that call yet."

The desk clerk said, "I guess that's what it's like in the FBI, huh? You suspect everybody?"

Rossi gave the clerk one of his toothy grins. "It goes with the job, ma'am."

"Tina," she said. "My name's Tina. I see your books on the Chief's shelves."

"Nice to meet you, Tina." He glanced around, assessing both the layout of the room and what he could recall about Chief Jaworski's facilities. "If you can make the Harwells comfortable for a few minutes, we'd like to talk to Mr. McClintick first."

At those words, JJ snapped the projector off. No need to alarm a man who was not yet high on their suspect list.

When Chipsey entered, Rossi offered him the basic courtesies and directed him to a far table. Decades of training and experience enabled him to look neutral and interested while what he really wanted to do was seize by the collar everyone he saw, including Tina the desk clerk, and demand to know where Hotchner and Prentiss were.

McClintick stated that he lived on half an acre way out in the country. He had come out to do some cleanup in his front yard an hour ago, and had seen an unfamiliar car pulled over on the shoulder about a hundred feet from his property line. The next time he looked up, he had seen an adult couple outside the car, hugging each other and looking all around them.

"Something about the tension in their bodies gave me the notion that they weren't just waiting for a tow truck from Triple-A," he explained.

"Very observant of you," Rossi said in a not-quite-friendly tone.

Chipsey shrugged. "I make my living photographing animals in the wild, Mr. Rossi."

Dave's eyes narrowed. "_Agent_ Rossi."

"I stand corrected. In my field, Agent Rossi, if you don't have a gift for noticing things that don't quite fit, for reading body tension and paying attention to where eyes are focused, you rarely get optimum results."

"Sorry for the interruption," Rossi said, although he was not the least bit sorry. This guy was way too smooth. "Please go on."

"A few minutes later I walked out to them and asked if I could help. They told me they were waiting to meet with someone who knew about their daughter. They didn't have a cell phone. I said if they needed anything, I would be right there in the yard and I would be happy to help. Later they gave up waiting for the person they were supposed to meet. They were very deeply distressed. When I discovered that they were Carla's parents, I offered to drive them into town to see Chief Jaworski."

"And how do you know Carla Harwell?"

"I don't know her well, Mister, ah, Agent Rossi. She took a class I gave at the rec center on making picture frames. I think maybe she took the shadowbox workshop, too, but I'm just guessing. But of course I had heard that she disappeared – on Sunday, I believe? Or early Monday? I don't recall."

Rossi looked him up and down. "And is this how you were dressed to do your yard work?" McClintick wore a chambray work shirt, worn jeans, and desert boots, topped by a soft heather-and-gray Armani jacket. He balanced a very nice gray fedora on one of his knees.

Chipsey frowned, then grinned. "Oh. I see your point. I added the jacket and hat for the trip into town."

"Just one more question for the moment, Mr. McClintick. Can you account for your time since, oh, say, eight this morning?"

"Yes, I believe I can. I was up shortly before seven. Jogged over to a friend's house where I have stable privileges. I took one of the horses out for a ride, groomed her, let all five of the horses out into the paddock. I talked to the stable man, who was just arriving. I was home by nine. A few minutes later I went out to do my yard work."

Seeing Morgan, Reid, and the chief entering the conference room, Rossi closed out the interview. McClintick paused on his way out to greet Jaworski warmly, shook hands with the other two agents, and took his leave.

JJ materialized at Rossi's elbow. "Now there," she said quietly, "goes a man who knows exactly how gorgeous he is."

Rossi looked at JJ, looked at McClintick's receding back. Looked at JJ again in disbelief.

_Confident to the point of arrogance, certainly, but gorgeous? Nah._

Lester and Kimberly Harwell, by comparison, had no arrogance in them. Both of them might have been attractive under better circumstances, but the events of the past three days had leached away their energy and carved dark circles under their eyes. It was not hard to imagine them too distraught to drive.

Mr. Harwell worked in human resources at the main Morley Creosote offices. His wife volunteered in the day care center at First Baptist Church. Carla was their only child, their miracle baby after a series of punishing miscarriages. Her parents had barely slept a wink since she vanished. They clung to each other's hands as to life rafts.

"It's so easy to blame yourself," Mrs. Harwell said. "Pastor Kennedy keeps telling us that there's really no earthly defense if the evil are determined to do evil, but – you keep wondering. Should I have been out on the porch, watching her to the corner of Memphis Road? When she was small, I always told her I would watch until she got to the corner. She always stopped and waved back at me, and, and, oh, Lester, I can't talk. Will you?"

Her husband pulled her closer to his side. "Of course," he said gently. Then he looked up at Rossi and Derek Morgan. "We got a call this morning some time between eight-thirty and quarter to nine," he said. "It was a woman's voice, not a familiar woman's voice. She said that Carla was just fine and we should look on our back steps and do what we were told to do."

He looked at his wife. "Honey?" Mrs. Harwell fished in her purse for a folded note on plain copy paper.

In the rounded, decorative hand of an adolescent girl, someone had written in ballpoint, _I am fine. If you come to the place where the Hanover vegtable stand used to be in 15 min they can bring you. Please don't call cops this is very important. I miss you and Ferdy, Carla. _The **I**s were dotted with happy faces.

"This was holding it down," Mrs. Harwell said, laying an inexpensive charm bracelet on the table. Rossi recognized it from the description of what the girl had been wearing. Dog charms: a Scotty, a dachshund, a chihuahua with the metallic coating chipped off one plastic ear. A St. Bernard. A cocker spaniel. A collie, like Carla's dog, Ferdinand. "And, yes, that's Carla's writing. I'd stake my life on it. The way the capital **I**s loop, the smiley-face dots, they are so Carla."

They could also make Carla's penmanship easier to fake, but Morgan and Rossi kept silent on that. Besides, the charm bracelet fit the description exactly, right down to the ear long ago chipped off the chihuahua.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Toward the rear of the station, there were three small cells. Jaworski had explained that the only time all three were in use at once was after a brawl. Ordinarily, they were empty, or like today, had only one occupant.

The current inmate was a pale and thin young man with a buzz cut, a red nose, red eyes, and nails bitten to the quick. He looked Reid up and down, dismissed him as irrelevant, then took a second look. Reid dragged a wooden office chair into the area that looked in on the cells. Interviews and interrogations were not his principal specialty, but he was perfectly competent at them. He sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him.

"My name is Spencer Reid," he said. "I'm with the FBI, like Agents Rossi and Jareau, that you already met. You're Charles Lincoln?" Finding no promising bit of fingernail to bite, the prisoner chewed on a cuticle. "Excellent, I'll take that as a yes," Reid said.

"You don't look like a Fed," Lincoln said. "But you don't look straight, either, and I'm betting you are, 'cause you're too goofy-looking to be a fag. Though, I gotta say, you look too goofy to be a Fed, too."

Reid grinned a little and waited to see whether silence would act like a vacuum with this man, as it did with so many others.

"Looks can fool you," Lincoln continued after two minutes of resisting the silence. "I know a guy as blond as you're ever gonna see, big blue eyes, and his name is Horowitz. He's a Hebe. So ya can't tell. And one of the big shots in the Brotherhood, you look at him, you think, what a queer, but it's, kinda, just the way he was brought up to dress and act and crap like that. Part of being real well-educated, they say." He examined his fingertips for more loose cuticle.

And Reid had a sudden clear image of a nature photographer whose orientation was unknown, but whom a youth like Lincoln might think acted and dressed in a less than manly fashion. As soon as he could believably pry himself away from the cell, he entered the main room of the station. He was pleased to see that Chipsey McClintick was still sitting there, reading a golf magazine.

"Hey," he said, "do you have a couple minutes?"

McClintick looked him up and down more comprehensively than Charles Lincoln ever could, and with a whole lot more interest. "I believe that I do, although no more than a couple," he replied.

Mentally reviewing the most recent information Garcia had pulled up on the photographer, Reid dropped into the plastic seat adjacent to Chipsey's. "Chief Jaworski speaks highly of you," he said. "She says she's never known you to miss something important."

"I'm honored, Mr. Reid. She's a sharp cookie and I value her opinion. She flatters me, though."

"Could you share with me anything you happen to know about Cornsilk?"

"You're talking about the Brotherhood of the Cornsilk, and not the agricultural byproduct?"

"Yes."

McClintick demonstrated no fidgeting or hesitation at all. "I know that when I moved into the area, Werner Osenbaugh was heading it up. That was a year or so before those excessively productive raids you folks pulled off." [Was that a sneer? If it was, it was expertly carried out and disposed of.] "I know that even though you people managed to miss everyone who was in an executive position, Werner got depressed anyway and killed himself three years ago. Blew his brains out. Pity he didn't splatter any over that youngest boy of his."

"Youngest boy?"

"I had occasion to try teaching Dana Lee Osenbaugh a little common courtesy last year. Alas." He finally moved his hands, turning his upturned hat slowly in his fingers. "It. Just. Didn't. Take."

"I heard about that. What brought it on?"

Chipsey gave him a sly smile. "Don't game me, Reid. You're part of the BAU. You already know about Dana Lee. And probably Rotterdam in '99. And the Hamptons in '03. San Diego in '05. Manchester, UK, in '08. What can I say? I don't like to be crowded. And some people apparently just look at me and decide I'm the kind of guy who needs a little crowding."

"You also have a concealed carry permit."

"Yes, it's part of my anti-crowding early warning system. See?" He raised the lapel of his jacket and displayed a shoulder holster. "Desert Eagle forty-five. Now, I have an eleven-fifteen appointment. Am I in custody, or am I free to leave?"

Reid made a negligent gesture. "Go. No problem. Just – I find it interesting that you haven't mentioned that your father was an FBI agent."

Chipsey pursed his lips and thought about that. "Well, Ko-Ko says, 'A terrible thing has just happened. It seems that you are the son of the Mikado.' To which Nanki-Poo replies, 'Yes, but that happened some time ago.'"

He patted Reid's knee, said, "_Ciao_," and left the station.

And, yeah. He moved like a panther.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

"Hey, are you OK?"

_Oh, sure. My wrists hurt and I think my hands are about to fall off, and my face hurts and my ribs hurt, and my elbow and my hip are killing me and my head hurts, but otherwise, hey, no problem. I'm just peachy-fucking-keen._

She made a kind of pleading noise into the gag.

Several hands tore at the tarp and pulled her from it.

_I can breathe!_

They lifted the blindfold.

Emily blinked and squinted in the light. It was earlier than she'd expected it to be. Noon, maybe a little later. She and her rescuers were on the gravel apron of a modest local ice cream stand at the foot of a steep hill. Three girls of approximately junior high school age, wearing plaid school uniforms, and not surprisingly carrying ice cream cones, gathered around her, their eyes wide with curiosity and awe.

Once the gag was pulled free, she said, "Does anyone have a cell phone?" She had to say it twice because her mouth was dry and her tongue didn't feel much like cooperating.

When the girls nodded – _like, duhhh!_ - she asked them to call 911. One of the girls produced her cell and made the call.

One of the other girls extended her ice cream cone. "You want a couple licks?" she asked. "It's rocky road."

"Sure," she croaked. It could have been radish ripple for all she cared. It was pure heaven.

Too bad that it was unlikely the girls would have a handcuff key. The cuffs had ratcheted tighter on her wrists and she could barely feel her hands. Fuck single-lock handcuffs, anyway. What was the matter with those fucking cheap-ass Cornsilk assholes they couldn't pop for double-lock? I didn't even know they still _sold_ the damn things ...

God, removing them was gonna suck. You wouldn't think that anything as salubrious as restoring circulation would hurt like a sonuvabitch, but it did. The tighter, the longer constricted, the more nightmarish that first couple minutes were.

Just so not gonna be fun...

"Why aren't you girls in school?"

"We had a pass to go to a prayer service for Sara Herrera," the helpful girl with the cone said. "And the other girls, too. We just stopped for ice cream on our way back to class. Nobody's gonna care."

"Are you, like, a rape victim?" the third girl asked seriously. Emily decided that she was Lorena.

"No," she managed to reply. Almost pulled off a smile. "I'm an FBI agent."

The girl with the cone kept holding it where Prentiss could lick it. "That must suck," she said, with solemn sympathy. "Is that how you catch the UNSUBs?"

"UNSUBs?" Emily echoed, startled.

"_Duhh_," the third girl said, and giggled.

"We're not ignorant," the girl with the cone explained. "We watch TV."

"Oh."

She closed her eyes and tried to think.

Hotch had given her a message, but now she realized that she could not remember it. Um, wait, naked in a hotel room, _help, help, no, I can't have forgotten what he said_, I didn't lose consciousness, so – wait, got it. Naked in hotel room, watching Song of Songs and slasher flicks. Brad Pais– no, that one was from me. Birdcage. Birdhouse. Funny phrase, birdhouse what? Birdhouse in my head? In my mind? Like "Windmills of My Mind"?

_Like the – something – that you find in the birdcage of my mind ..._

_Can't be right._

A few minutes later Chief Jaworski's personal black-and-white screamed up to the ice cream stand with the driver's side door just three feet from Prentiss.

_Die, bitch, die,_ Emily thought, _but not until you take off the damn cuffs_.

"Thank God," the smaller woman said as she slid out of the car. "I hoped it was one of you. Well, I won't lie, both of you would have been even better. Jesus, honey, you're a mess. I have EMS on the way. Jareau and Reid will meet you at the emergency room. Good God almighty, who would use single-lock cuffs? Unless they didn't plan for you to live long enough to get nerve damage. Or they just didn't care. This is – this is just barbaric. Now let me see whether my key will work on these. Take a deep breath, sweetie, let's get the hard part over with."

Prentiss made a snap decision that Chief Jaworski wasn't faking "nice." She drew a long steadying breath. "Ready. Ouch, damn it, ouch-ouch-ouch-fucking-ouch-" 

"I'm so sorry, sweetie. Do you know where Agent Hotchner is?"

"They still have him," she panted. "But I have some decent descriptions. I really need to see the guys."

"EMS truck is two minutes away," Jaworski assured her. "You'll see them at the hospital, cross my heart. Things are happening way too fast."

"Like?"

"Well, about half an hour before we got the call about you, we learned that early this morning, DEA agents over in Jefferson County went to bust a meth lab and found all four of our missing girls. No meth lab. Just the funniest thing. And the girls are just fine, had their school books and computer games and a Wii and movies on DVD and pizza on Saturday nights. They're calling their parents in. Agent Rossi and Agent Morgan are going nuts with your computer girl, trying to find out who the DEA's CI was that told them about the lab, 'cause the DEA sure isn't talking. Except to the press."

"Hawthorne," Prentiss said, with absolute confidence.

"As a matter of fact, that was the name–"

"Oh, my God, it's all Cornsilk," Emily said. "Even the abductions. They were in a panic when I left wherever they were keeping me. Somebody had come down on Hawthorne, and, um, hang on, Bobby is in the wind and nobody can find Link."

A barking laugh from Troy Jaworski. "That would be Charlie Lincoln. We have his sorry little butt in a cell back at the office."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

By two o'clock, Emily Prentiss had been examined and treated, and had signed herself out of Crowley County Mercy with an Against Medical Advice release.

["Just call it my Hotch impersonation," she had snapped at Reid when he tried to get all stupid and protective on her. When he appealed to JJ as the voice of reason, Jayj had just shrugged and said, "It's exactly what Hotch would do, Spence. What's your point?" And since it was so much easier for women to bully Reid than it was for men – and he was outnumbered two to one – he had surrendered without much more fight.]

Cissy, the county forensics chick, had Prentiss's clothing and the gag and the tarp and the cuffs, poring over them for the minutest bit of trace evidence that might steer them to where Hotch was being held.

Now, wearing hot pink sweats borrowed from Officer Arnold's wife, Emily sat on the corner of the desk being used by JJ Jareau. She had a small paper cup with Tylenol in it, but so far she had just peered into it and thought about taking it. A long trestle table against one wall held takeout from Belle Pepper, an Italian restaurant just down Creosote Road from the hospital. (Like everything else of importance in Crowley County, if it wasn't in town on Washington or Commerce Streets, then it was along the stretch of State Route 14 that within the county was called Creosote.)

"They knew us, Morgan," she said for the third or fourth time. "They knew Hotch carries a backup gun and where to find it. And somebody they called the Man may know him. Either that, or they took him to meet the Man before they brought him to where they had me."

Chief Jaworski approached her carrying a fat mug book. "I have an idea," she said.

Emily sighed with frustration. "I told you, the only thing I saw was a gray knit watch cap."

Jaworski was undeterred. "Check this guy out," she said, and opened the book to a picture of a large, round-faced young white man with resentful eyes, a pendulous lower lip, thinning dark curls and a little soul patch. "He's six-eight, three-seventy, and he has a noticeably deep voice."

"Could be," she said listlessly.

"His name's Oscar Pendleton Martin," Jaworski told her. "Twenty-eight. Smart but lazy. A local punk and a bully. Has a real mean streak."

"That fits."

"Something else. His dad is Chet Martin, used to run a gun shop. Retired now. There was always a rumor that he, the dad, was mixed up with Cornsilk. We looked at him pretty hard, but we couldn't find anything to run with other than him selling perfectly legal weapons, legally, to legally qualified buyers, some of whom happened to be Cornsilk members. Still-"

As though by magic, the other five members of the team who were present suddenly materialized on that side of the room, all of them staring coldly at the mug shot.

"If I can scare up the video of my last chat with Oscar," Jaworski said, "I can put together kind of a lay-down, only with recordings of several deep-voiced guys."

Finally, Prentiss was interested. She took another long look at the man who might be Lurch, and said, "Sounds good. When you're ready, I'm up for it."

Jaworski smiled at her. "You're looking really good, Agent Prentiss."

"No way," Emily replied. She had seen the vivid raw lines the gag had rubbed into the skin on either side of her mouth. "I look like the Joker."


	5. Chapter 5

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Five**

**Make a Little Birdhouse in Your Soul **

Aaron Hotchner lay face down, breathless with horror, accepting the fact that he was lost in his worst nightmare. The man who crouched beside him, the man upon whose mercy he was entirely dependent, knew more about him than anyone else in the world – his dark places, his hidden fears, and his secret shames. More than his family did, more than Haley had. And certainly more than any of the Bureau's shrinks. The tortures he most dreaded. The manners of death he most feared.

"You see, gentlemen, there's no reason to be sloppy about it," the man said. "It's all a matter of pacing. Isn't it, Aaron?" he added.

Hotchner tried not to whimper. The man had barely begun, and yet Hotch had already reached the ragged limits of his self-control. Dying exposed as a chickenshit was worse than the dying itself, but he had no reserves of courage left.

"Opie, son, plug that in, will you?" The man who knew him too well now rolled him to his side, his back to the wall, and began to loosen the buttons of his shirt. "Guess what I'm going to do!" he said cheerily.

He prayed to a deity he no longer believed in, not so much to be delivered, but just for someone to talk to. Something to concentrate on other than this man's power and his own helplessness.

_And the betrayal_, Aaron Hotchner, that most loyal of men, added. _The obscene betrayal_.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Derek Morgan sat down opposite Emily and looked her in the eye. "You know that I don't want to get personal, Princess," he said, "and your life is your life, but you know better than we do what kind of creeps have Hotch. So if you have ever, ever been naked, or mostly naked, in a hotel room with him, that might be critical to the message."

She blew her nose. "Don't be ridiculous. The only times I have ever been in a hotel room with Aaron Hotchner are for conferences – and I was never the only one there. Or when we were searching for an UNSUB or a victim. And always completely dressed. Always."

"How about in a state of partial or complete undress anywhere else? Your place, his place?"

Prentiss wanted to tear her hair. "You know, just because I know why you're asking these questions doesn't mean I like to answer them. No, no. no. He was naked when they threw him into the closet with me, but there's no reason to refer to that in code. Other than that, the closest I have ever been to a partially dressed Hotch is when I visited him in the hospital. Closest he has ever been to me undressed was when he visited me in the hospital. Well, and a couple beach and pool parties the unit has thrown. But trunks and swim suits aren't a state of undress and we were all there.

"We have no romantic or sexual or physical relationship. None. I've danced with you at parties a lot more often than I've danced with Hotch. Outside the job, the only close physical contact I have ever had with him was when you and I were teaching him and Haley to water ski. Period."

"Is it possible that Hotch read something in to some exchange of yours that–"

"Derek." She seized both of his hands. "I know what you're doing. I understand it. I do the same thing. You can't afford to drop a line of inquiry until you're positive you've exhausted it. But, honest to God, I have nothing to hide. If I thought I could save Hotch by claiming we were intimate, I'd be on YouTube right this very minute, telling the world – in several languages – that I blow him on the Arlington tour bus every Saturday afternoon and he screws me every Tuesday night on Rossi's desk."

Rossi, who with his gift for being in all the wrong places at the wrong times was passing them at that moment, said, "What's been happening on my desk?"

And Emily snarled, "Nothing," and Morgan said, "Back off, man."

Morgan breathed deeply several times. "All right, Princess, let's change focus. Have the two of you ever discussed the Bible?"

_And how did we get from naked to the Bible?_

"I don't think we ever have. Well, the code that Reid sent us when Tobias Henkel had him, that was Bible verses. Oh! And that was a code. Is that where you're going with this?"

He cleared his throat tactfully. "Song of Songs?"

_Bible_.

Somehow she had pictured the Song of Songs as some period epic about a composer. She tried not to display her chagrin. But then, she realized, in the sections of Europe where she had grown up Roman Catholic, Bible reading had been almost non-existent among the faithful. They concentrated on their rosaries and let their clergy instruct them on what was in the Bible.

She didn't know much about the Song of Songs, either, except that a college roommate had told her that drinking wine out of each other's navels was in that book of the Bible.

Which was something that the little old priests in rural Italy hadn't included in their Sunday sermons, just fancy that.

She jerked at the sound of knuckles on the door to the conference room.

Rossi opened it, said, "Oh, it's you."

"I'm touched by your enthusiasm," an unfamiliar voice said. A silky and amused voice. "But I'm here to help you, if I can."

Prentiss swiveled her head to see a man with flowing gray hair drawn back in a ponytail standing in the doorway. The kind of man you just naturally gawk at. Thirty percent hot, seventy percent charismatic, she decided.

"The girls have been found," Rossi said.

"I heard. I hope they're all healthy and unharmed. But I'm here because I picked up a bit of disturbing gossip."

"Really."

"Yes, Mr. Rossi."

"Listen, McClintick, you aren't fooling anyone. You know that my title is 'Agent.' Your father was with the Bureau. Errol Beverley McClintick. He retired in '77, committed suicide in '79. You were twelve."

"Not quite," the visitor said, not quite so silkily. "It was three days before my birthday."

"How traumatic for you," Rossi said, taking on a little silk himself. "A young boy like that, maybe blaming the Bureau for his father's death. Have you ever considered taking out your rage on federal agents in general?"

"So," the man named McClintick said, "you're suggesting that maybe I've channeled my trauma into something like Cornsilk?"

"It's possible."

McClintick rolled his eyes. "Right." In a creditable imitation of Iñigo Montoya in _Princess Bride_, he said, "'Hello. My name is Beverley McClintick. You killed my faddah. Prepare to die.' Right. Brilliant. As. If."

He slammed his fist hard against the door jamb. He was stronger than he looked. "Now _listen to me!_" he roared. (Louder than he looked, too.) "Troy tells me that some of your agents have been taken. There's a man down at the Sterling Inn right now bragging about what the new leader of Cornsilk has done to the Feds. Do you want that information, or do you want to stand around playing power games?"

All of the agents were on their feet now.

"Tell me more," Rossi said in a much more reasonable tone.

Dropping his volume down to normal levels, McClintick said, "His first name is Dan. I didn't catch his last name. About five-ten, mid-to-late-forties, two hundred pounds. Beefy, broad shoulders, short light brown hair, light eyes. Blue or gray, I think. Red golf shirt, jeans, Doc Martens. Trucker's tan and a wedding ring. The kind of face that reddens easily. Sunglasses hanging on his belt. Left earlobe pierced, but no earring in it. He's left-handed and a mediocre pool player. He drinks Coors from the bottle."

"That's a pretty comprehensive description," Rossi conceded quietly.

"Eh," McClintick said with a shrug, "What can I say? Animals in the wild." He nodded amiably to the agents and turned to leave.

"Stop, please. Tell me what this guy is saying."

McClintick turned again. "He says that Cornsilk's current leader is awesome, brilliant, the best tactician since Patton. That the Brotherhood has risen again. When I said, right, to kidnap little girls, he said that that was just to lure the Feebs in. He said that they cut a couple Feebs out from the herd this morning. Said that he had seen their top guy reduce the Feebs' top guy to a quivering wreck who was begging for his life."

Emily Prentiss felt as though something icy had just slammed through her body, but she moved toward McClintick. "Do you know a man named Oscar Martin?"

McClintick snorted. "Opie? Of course. He's hard to miss."

_Opie? What the fuck? Oh, of course. Oscar Pendleton Martin, O. P. Martin._

"Is – is Opie a friend of this Dan?" she asked.

"I couldn't say, ma'am," McClintick replied. "I've only seen Dan around town two or three times. But they're both jerks and they're both Cornsilk types, so, who knows?"

Everyone wanted to swarm down to the Sterling Inn, but Morgan came down hard. Nobody from the team would go. Chief Jaworski and a couple of her officers would go pick up this Dan guy. Anybody could do that. The team members would stay right where they were and keep working on Hotchner's message, because they were the intended targets of the message and the only people who could do that job.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

"... And then he said we sang 'Birdcage of Your Mind,'" she repeated, "and–"

Garcia, in her IT cave at Quantico, said, "Do you mean 'Birdhouse in Your Soul,' girlfriend?"

Prentiss thought that over. "Yes. That's what it was."

"Aw, I like that song!" Garcia said. "They Might Be Giants. _Flood,_ 1990."

Derek snorted. "There she goes again, our personal Wikipedia. That was 20 years ago, Baby Girl. How did you know that?"

"It isn't that hard, Sugar Plum. It's actually the last words of the first song on the CD: 'It's a brand-new record for 1990, They Might Be Giants' brand-new album, _Flood_.' Or something like that."

"You know what, Sweetness? You knowing that is even scarier." Morgan turned to Reid and said, "And why didn't you know that, Brainiac?"

"Not my field," Reid murmured distractedly. He had written fourteen words in block print on his legal pad:

FIRST TIME

HOTEL

NAKED

SONG OF SONGS

SLASHER MOVIES

BIRD HOUSE IN YOUR SOUL

"Are we letting ourselves get misled here, attaching too much significance to a song that may have been nothing but a throwaway line?" Rossi asked. He peered over at Reid's notes. "And 'birdhouse' is one word, Reid. Like 'shithouse."

Reid scrawled an elision mark between the D and the H. "Happy?"

"Happy," Rossi replied.

"Come on, guys, nothing Hotch does is throwaway," Morgan said. "He's about the least spontaneous person I know. And I know some real bunched-up people."

"So, 1990," JJ said, looking up from her Blackberry. "Hotch would be in college, and according to this, They Might Be Giants were huge on college campuses back then. So, yes, it's more than possible that he knows the song well and chose it deliberately."

"But how did he know I was going to talk about singing?"

"I think JJ is right," said Rossi. "He wanted to say it. And with the reference to the Song of Songs, I think he was trying to set it up himself, and then you gave him a lead so he didn't have to."

_Yes! he had said. And his voice had been so eager_.

"So 'Birdhouse in Your Soul' is probably critical," Garcia said. "Maybe more so than Song of Songs?"

Derek said, "And what about Il Porto and the rain? And Brad Paisley?"

Emily picked the two Tylenol tabs from their paper cup and rolled them around in her hand. "No good," she said. "Paisley and the restaurant were from me." She picked up her tea and swallowed the pills.

"And why the Song of Songs?" JJ asked.

Rossi was up for that one. "Probably because it's the only even remotely romantic book in the Bible."

Morgan said, "Oh, I don't know about that. Some parts of the Book of Ruth–"

"OK, let me make sure I have everything," Garcia said. "People named Byrd and Birdsong. Aviaries. Hotels named after birds. Towns named after birds-"

"But why is it in a hotel room?" Reid asked in a frustrated tone. "You could have been hanging around his place naked. Or yours."

"Reid, I don't think Hotch was concentrating on verisimilitude," Rossi said.

Reid ignored him. "And 'birdhouse,' it just seems just too obvious for these Cornsilk guys, who are supposed to know what they're doing, to let Hotchner throw out a ham-handed, obvious hint like that."

"But they thought I was going to die," Emily said. "They didn't have any reason to care even if Hotch had said, 'we're at so-and-so Main Street, and the brains of the outfit is John Doe.'"

"Well, Punkin," said Garcia, "going for less literal, a martin is a bird. They call them house martins. That could be a birdhouse, couldn't it? So, Chet or Oscar Martin?"

Rossi glanced up, interested. "What do we have on Martin? Have we vetted him yet?"

Her hands flew over her keyboard. "No, but I am ripping his life wide open as we speak."

Within a minute, however, she announced, "Dead end on the dad. Mr. Martin has been in a nursing home for the last eight months. He's legally blind and he's had both legs amputated. Uncontrolled diabetes."

"And his son Oscar?"

"On probation, working as janitor/cleanup at a restaurant called Belle Pepper. Nine more weeks to go on probation. Simple assault." Several pairs of eyes drifted to the boxes and bags that had contained their takeout lunch. Red tomatoes, white onions, green bell peppers, and the legend, "Belle Pepper Quality Italian Cuisine."

"And where does he live?"

"Clementine Apartments. A lot of the people on your list seem to live at the Clementine Apartments."

"It's the only apartment complex of any size in town," JJ said. "What can I say? It's small towns."

Reid poked around online, downloading the MP3 of Birdhouse in Your Soul and looking up its lyrics. After a few minutes of studying what he had gathered, he said, "Guys, I don't want to get so analytical that I move us astray, but 'Birdhouse' isn't about a bird; it's about a night-light shaped like a bird."

Garcia's response to that was to snort, "Well of course, Punkin."

"'Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch,' Reid quoted, "'who watches over you.' And 'I have a secret to tell from my electrical well."

Rossi stared down into the dregs of his convenience store coffee. "Did Hotchner mention any particular verses of the Song of Songs? Anything about light, for example? Does anyone have a Bible?"

Emily's eyelids drooped. She was fighting to stay on her game, but so worn out by stress that the only thing keeping her awake was her determination to save Hotchner. "No, I told you – just reading Song of Songs to each other, naked. In a hotel. And watching slasher flicks."

"And you're sure he didn't mention which hotel?"

"He didn't say. We didn't even have 30 seconds, Reid!"

"But if it's something with an electrical well-"

"No. Nothing."

Reid grumbled and returned to his laptop. He poked around a while longer, then suddenly scribbled something on his legal pad and surged to his feet. "Hey, guys, I think we may have a _really_ big problem here."

"No, really?" Rossi growled. "And what we have already is only a _small_ problem?"

"N-no, no – it's just-" He slid into geek lecture-mode. "It all goes back to, why was it so important to say 'hotel'? I don't think he wasted any words. A lot of hotel Bibles are Gideon Bibles, OK? Now, stay with me. Stay with me." He held up one professorial finger. "Listen to this line from Birdhouse: 'After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts.'

"Jason - Gideon," he said deliberately. "Jason Gideon. This can't be coincidence."

Prentiss made a dismissive noise. She couldn't remember him saying anything that fatuous since the _evil-twin_ and _eviler-twin_ bullshit he had laid out on the plane a couple years back.

Rossi shook his head. "Come on, kid. That's quite a stretch."

"Really thin," Prentiss concurred.

But the next person to speak was Morgan, and his voice was not cheerful. "Man, I do not want to be the one saying this, but – even before Emily gave Hotch that opening to say 'Birdhouse,' he said 'slasher movies.' Jason? _Friday the 13__th_?"

Moment of profound silence.

"So – if that's the case," asked JJ slowly, "is he telling us to contact Gideon? Because I don't know anyone who actually knows where he is. Unless one of you does and isn't talking about it."

She glared at Rossi, who maintained an awesome network of contacts in law enforcement.

"Sorry," he said. "If I knew anything else, I would have told you a long time ago. I've got no reason to keep secrets about Jason Gideon."

"Maybe he didn't realize-" Emily began.

"Hey, people, Gideon's a bird-lover," Garcia said. "He's a life member of the Audubon Society. Oh, oh, wait-" Her fingers danced and her eyes darted from one screen to another. "_Mais non, mes amis_," she sighed finally. "He may still be carrying around his membership card, but he's listed as 'moved, no forwarding' on their membership rolls. No contact for almost two years. But still – birds again. If this is a coincidence, it's a pretty freaky one."

"You know, McClintick has taken award-winning pictures of birds," Morgan said. "And his dad being with the bureau. There's – there's just way too much birds-and-FBI to feel accidental."

"And I don't think he's asking us to bring Gideon in on this," Reid stammered, his face bleak. "I wish I did." His tone was so mournful that everyone turned. He had the entire team's attention.

"There are three statements that start the song, and each of them contradicts the one before it. _I'm your only friend_. Then _I'm not your only friend_. And then _But really, I'm not actually your friend_.

"I think those words, and maybe the 'naked' part of the message, are that he's telling us that Jason Gideon has gone over to the dark side and is active in Cornsilk, and I'm guessing in a leadership role."

Emily felt a pang of sympathy for Spencer Reid, who had considered Jason Gideon the closest thing he had to a real father. Just the notion that Gideon might be on the other side of the law now must have been difficult to consider, let alone to articulate.

"If we were talking about anybody but Gideon, it might be possible," she conceded unwillingly. "Just barely. And they did operate like people with law enforcement training. But– "

Rossi leaned back. "Oh, shit."

"This is ridiculous," JJ said. "I don't want to discourage anyone, but I'm looking at the words to this song, and there's enough material in here that it could mean _anything_. Or _nothing_. Like 'little glowing friend.' Maybe he has a tac-nuke. Then, 'I'd be fired if that were my job.' That could mean Hotch is saying _I blew it, I got us captured, I should be fired_. It could even mean that he was the one who killed Jason." She made a face. "With or without the screaming Argonauts. Really, guys, don't you think maybe we're over-analyzing?"

"That's just the point!" Reid all but shouted at her. His manner was so passionate that Emily half expected him to leap up on a table and declaim. "_We_ aren't over-analyzing," he insisted. "_I'm_ over-analyzing. It's what I do, it's my big weakness, and Hotch knows that. And he knew that if this got back to us, I would be doing just exactly what I'm doing. If he had been afraid that I would over-analyze us right off the rails, he wouldn't have said it the way he said it."

"You're giving him a lot of credit, kid."

Reid stared Rossi down in silence.

_Whoa_, Emily thought. _The kid has grown up and he has fangs_. Not many people in or out of the Bureau stood up to David Rossi.

"I give up," Rossi said at last. "You've made your point. Aaron connects with you over this kind of stuff, so you're right. He's probably expecting you to run with this."

"Guys, maybe it's the other way around," Garcia suggested. "Maybe Gideon's working undercover against Cornsilk?"

Rossi made a scoffing noise. "Jason Gideon has no undercover experience of any kind. None."

"That doesn't mean he hasn't picked some up," Garcia argued.

Morgan smoothly took control. "OK, folks, let's stay realistic here. If Reid is reading this right and this is all about Jason Gideon – and that's still a huge _if_ - then we have two possibilities. One, he's in there undercover and he'll probably do what he can to protect Hotch, so we can stop worrying about him and work the profile. And if Gideon is really in Cornsilk, really on the dark side, then Hotch is probably dead already, so we can stop worrying about him and work the profile. Bottom line: Work the damn profile."

JJ still didn't seem happy. She blew her bangs out of her eyes several times, then dug around in her bag for something and bounced up out of her chair and left the room without a word.

Several minutes passed. People opened fresh cans of soda, picked through leftover Belle Pepper food, flexed their fingers, and stared at their notes. Rossi yawned, stretched, and consulted his tiny note pad. "About this guy you called Boston," he said to Prentiss, "what gave you the idea he was educated? Anything you can identify?"

She made a hang-on-a-second gesture and buried her face in her hands. She was starting to feel a little disoriented. "His vocabu– "

The door opened with a bang.

JJ Jareau stood there, her face grave, with Chief Jaworski at her side. "Tell them what you just told me about this picture," she said.

"Sure thing," said the chief, clearly a little confused, but happy to cooperate. "I said make his hair longer, give him a bright flowery dashiki and a bunch of rings and a big sparkly earring, and it's absolutely Tad Bell. If it isn't Tad, he has a twin he never talks about."

"Now tell them who Tad Bell is."

"Thaddeus Bell," Jaworski replied, pronouncing it _Taddy-oose_. "He owns the Belle Pepper restaurant, the place I got our lunch from. It used to be the Mexican Maid, but now it's Italian. He's been in town about eighteen months now. A nice enough guy, no trouble at all. Well, I had to bust him for having a couple joints on him last winter, but he's really OK. Kind of a flair for the dramatic, but just as sweet and friendly as he can be."

Lips compressed tightly, JJ displayed what she had in her hand: a snapshot from a barbecue the team had thrown in her yard three years previously. Jason Gideon was prominent in the foreground.

"I'm on board," she said in a shaky voice. "God help me, I'm on board."

Jaworski's face grew pale and damp. "Please tell me who this man is," she said in a tight, strained voice of embarrassment. "The man in the picture. Because I've gone out a few times with Tad. I – I really like him. I thought maybe he liked me. If I'm being used–"

"At the moment, Chief," Derek Morgan said gently, "I don't know how to answer that question. We have to speak to Mr. Bell before we make any assumptions about his identity. Have your men come back with Dan yet?"

"No. He left the Inn before they arrived. I have a last name, though, Hollister. Daniel Hollister, been in town for three months. Drives a logging rig for Morley. The boys are tracking down his last known address."

When Troy Jaworski had left the room, Morgan said, "Let's not jump to conclusions. Maybe all that Hotch was trying to tell us was that the guy _looked_ like Gideon. That's still lousy news for the chief, but not as bad as it might be for us. Dave, will you take Tad Bell on? And Prentiss, are you up to going with him? Maybe you'll recognize a voice or a smell or something."

Emily brushed back her hair. "I can do that."


	6. Chapter 6

Ack, generally I'm a pretty good planner, but fiction is soooo much trickier than non-fiction, and once again I have underestimated how long it will take to get from point D to point E. So, seven chapters and an epilogue. And I feel like such a dork ... thank you for your patience with me!

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Six**

**And Any King, a Pawn**

Before the interview, there was the prep. Although it was intended principally for Prentiss and Rossi, all five of them watched as Garcia's data shone on the whiteboard.

The first image was a stunning shot of an American bald eagle, wings spread in descent. Emily frowned. She knew she had seen that picture somewhere–

"That's one of the pictures on the wall of the admin conference room at Hoover," Rossi said, referring to the Bureau's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Big sucker. Easy four feet high, five, six feet wide."

"You win the daily double, sir," Garcia said. "That photo was a gift to the Bureau from Jason Gideon in 2002. Estimated value is currently inching toward six figures. It's signed _Bev McClintick_. I don't know what you'll want to make of it, but there's some kind of prior relationship between these two guys, even if it's only vendor-customer."

The door opened behind them and Chief Jaworski slipped in. She stood on the far side of the room, her right hip braced against the trestle table that had held lunch.

"Garcia," Morgan said, "for the moment let's concentrate exclusively on Mr. Bell. Chief Jaworski is here and she knows him well."

"Sure thing, Sugar Drop. Here's his operator's license picture. Thaddeus Marcus Bell," she said, pronouncing his first name in the American fashion, "born Tadeusz Markus Brzeg, whoa, I'm sure I didn't say that part right, August of '54, in Toronto, making him fifty-six. Six feet, one-ninety, brown and brown."

She displayed a picture that was unmistakably that of Jason Gideon, hair grown out an inch or so, a bright feathered earring in his left ear. Eyebrows groomed and thinned, his right eyebrow pierced and decorated with a gold ring. Like most DMV photos, it looked more like a mugshot than anything else. It also looked as though he might be wearing eyeliner.

Tina the desk clerk tiptoed into the room and handed some papers to Chief Jaworski, then tiptoed back out.

Another shot, hair grown out but no jewelry visible. "US State Department passport photo, Thaddeus Marcus Bell, naturalized citizen, issued in '08. The only place he's been with it is Poland, in February of '09."

"To Brzeg," Chief Jaworski interrupted, pronouncing it _bzhek_, more or less. "And to Katowice. His family emigrated to Canada from Katowice in the 1920s."

"_Brzeg_ means 'shore,'" Emily told the team.

"Yes," Jaworski said, eyeing Prentiss with interest.

Emily smiled back at her. "My family spent a month in Krakow in the early 80s, the _Solidarność_ years. No idea why I remember _brzeg_."

"Well, then, you weren't but an hour by bus from where my own family started out," Jaworski said. "Oswiecim."

Emily translated that for the team to the name by which the town was best known in the States. "Auschwitz," she said.

"The city, not the camp. They left in the 1890s. I've been there three times. It's a nice little town with a kickass hockey team."

Emily backed off at that point, because she wanted to create a bond, but she didn't want to come off as either a smartass or a showoff.

"Er, moving right along," Garcia said, "local coverage of the opening of Belle Pepper. Background piece on Bell talks about his previous restaurant, the – Chief?"

"Just like it looks. Katowice. _Cotto-veet-sa_."

"Right," Garcia said, sounding unconvinced. "Just like it looks. The Katowice, in Schenectady. And a picture of Bell in the aforementioned previous restaurant, allegedly 2003."

"Is there really such a restaurant in Schenectady?"

"Isn't, but was. Changed hands in '07, became the, um – here it is, Snowdrop Smörgåsbord."

"I could have told you that," Jaworski said. "The Katowice was his father's restaurant. Polish cuisine. He sold it after his dad passed on. Tried a couple other things, then returned to what he knows best, restaurant management, but in a place without so many memories."

"It looks like him back then," Reid said, leaning forward to scrutinize the image.

"Who is this 'him'?" Jaworski insisted. "Who is the man in the picture if it isn't Tad?"

Morgan dodged that one again. "We're still working on that one, Chief."

"Your nose is growing, Agent Morgan."

"It can only improve my classic good looks."

"Hang on," Garcia said. Tad Bell's driver's license photo once again filled the whiteboard.

"Whoa, whoa," Jaworski said as she scrawled her signature on some papers on a clipboard. "I just realized you guys must be on the wrong page with Tad being someone else. I sent in his fingerprints to AFIS when I arrested him. Wouldn't those supercomputers have caught it and given me a heads-up if his prints belonged to someone else?"

In the large room adjacent to where the BAU team were gathered, a phone began to ring.

"For a misdemeanor grass bust?" Reid asked.

"I do whatever the folks at the capital tell me to–" Jaworski turned toward the open door. "Tina? Tina? Sorry, she must have stepped into the rest room," the chief said, and walked out of the conference room. They heard her picking up a phone and fielding a call.

"Is he still flagged as an agent?" Rossi asked Garcia, keeping his voice low so she would know to word her answer carefully.

"No flags," she said. "None I can see from here." She typed again and frowned deeply. "I'm in AFIS now, and they have no prints listed for Thaddeus Marcus Bell, that birth date, that location. Nothing even close." More typing, more frowning. "I have an arrest here for Bell, the sum total of his criminal record, arrested November 23rd of '09, pleaded guilty of misdemeanor possession, did three days in the Crowley County pokey and one hundred hours of community service. Can't find a record on any prints at all uploaded to AFIS from your bunch there in the last two weeks of November."

While Garcia continued to work her magic, Rossi sat down beside Prentiss. "What's the single most important question you can think of to ask him?"

"I've been thinking about that," Emily replied. "The more I review it, the more confident I am that Hotch was trying to tell me about someone he met right after we were taken. So, we left the building at ten after nine. We're looking at, oh, any time between 9:30 and 10:00. Make it 10:15, give us a little wiggle room. So I want to know where–" She drew quotation marks in the air– "'Tad Bell' was during that time frame."

Rossi noted the times in his little notebook.

Jaworski re-entered the room, her face dark with concern. "My desk clerk is missing," she said. "Tina was here ten minutes ago, but she's gone now. Her purse isn't in the locked cabinet she keeps it in, and the bag she carries her lunch and her walking shoes in is missing, too. I'm paranoid enough right now that I would think she had been snatched, too, but whoever did it would have had to collect her things. That would have cut it pretty fine. It isn't like her to just walk out, but she's been distracted lately, I think some problems on the home front. I'll send Jason's unit over to check her place out.

"Ray's coming in," she added. "He's a good man. A very good man. He'll hold down the fort with you, but I have to run over to Jeff County for the abducted girls thing. Here's my cell number, so call me, text me, whatever's best for you if anything changes." She grimaced. "Or doesn't."

"Chief," Morgan said, "we can't find any record of Thaddeus Bell's prints being uploaded to AFIS."

Jaworski frowned. "But – but, well, I'll check on that. Oh, and when you go see Thaddeus Bell, he really does pronounce it _Taddy-oose_. For someone who runs an Italian restaurant, he has a lot of Polish pride."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Shortly before four PM, Prentiss and Rossi climbed into the same SUV she and Hotch had occupied that morning. Emily did not look forward to speaking frankly about Gideon to Dave. She knew he would want to bounce various theories and strategies around prior to the meeting, and Prentiss was too troubled to do that comfortably.

The engine had turned over and Rossi was ready to shift into drive when Jaworski appeared at the driver's side window and rapped on the glass. When the window slid open, she said, "Tina definitely didn't send those prints along to AFIS. I can't even find the card I did the ink work on. It isn't filed. I'm not happy about this, and I'm not happy with Tina. Sorry, didn't mean to detain you, but I wanted you to have that information."

The effect of that news was to kill any temptation to speculate about Jason Gideon and Tad Bell. The only words spoken at all on the twelve-minute ride up Creosote Road were by Prentiss. "Wasn't Bell's picture up on the screen when Tina came in? Do you think she might have run away to warn Gideon? Or Bell?"

Rossi gave an unhappy grunt and concentrated on the road.

The Belle Pepper was a rambling stucco building painted white with red and green trim. If one looked carefully, one might spot minor architectural features that suggested a Tex-Mex past, but its previous life was not immediately obvious.

Four cars occupied the large paved lot, and a green pickup truck stood parked close to the rear employee entrance. Thinking, _Ah, pickup truck_, Prentiss drifted over and peered into the bed of the truck. Rather than being cluttered with loose objects that could roll around and assault an unwilling passenger, the pickup contained a pyramid of six creosote-treated railroad ties. [Not surprisingly, given the county's largest corporation, creosote-treated rail ties and utility poles were a popular landscaping feature.] These particular ties were secured firmly with a length of plastic rope. An accumulation of dust and detritus suggested to her that the ties had been sitting there for at least two or three days.

She shook her head sourly at Rossi as she joined him at the front entrance.

"I got the tags," he said, indicating the vehicles in the parking lot, "just in case. Maybe one of them belongs to Tina. Oh – and exactly how much Polish do you speak?"

"Not much. Basic pleasantries, hello, how are you, please and thank you. A few random nouns, worse than useless. Shore. Underpants. Broom. Street. Lawyer. Artichoke."

"'Shore' came in handy."

She shook her head. "Talk about lucky coincidences. Unless we can steer the conversation around to vegetables or underwear."

They entered the Belle Pepper. Its interior was cool and dark. Softly playing on the sound system, the Backstreet Boys sang that they wanted it that way.

A tall and elegant young woman in a long-waisted navy satin dress approached them. "I'm Margo. May I help you?" Her voice was soft. Her fingers gleamed with silver jewelry, and she hugged a pair of menus to her bosom.

Rossi displayed his credentials. Emily did the same. "We'd like to speak to Mr. Bell for a few minutes, if we may."

"Of course," Margo said, after a long look at their identification and a similar long look at their faces. She glanced around the almost empty dining room – only three tables were taken – and indicated a small booth. "I'll get Mr. Bell for you. Yasmin, will you see what you can bring our guests to drink?"

Margo left and a short, cheerful young woman with Mediterranean features approached their booth. "Hi," she said, before they had even seated themselves. "My name's Yasmin, and I'll be your server this afternoon."

"No," Dave said. "We're just here to speak to your boss."

She seemed to find nothing unusual about that. "Then what can I get you to drink?"

"I'm fine," Dave said. Emily asked for a Diet Coke. As she was about to slide into the booth, she indicated with a raised eyebrow that Margo was coming back their way, threading her way among the tables. Immediately behind her was a dark-eyed figure in leather pants and a bright paisley shirt with its sleeves rolled to the elbow, wearing a bird-of-paradise earring in his left ear. A thick band of tiny opals glittered on his right eyebrow. There was a ring on almost every finger. When he got close to them, Emily smelled some cologne that was both expensive and musky.

"Agents Prentiss and Rossi," Margo said, indicating each one as she gave their names.

His eyes showed no recognition whatsoever. They stood there, all of them still on their feet, and Tad Bell raised the half-glasses he wore on a velvet ribbon. "May I see your identification?" he asked.

"You're Thaddeus Bell?" Rossi asked, giving it the pronunciation Jaworski had insisted upon.

"I am."

"I'd like to see some identification, too."

Tad Bell handed over his billfold. He slipped his half-glasses onto his nose and examined Rossi's, and then Prentiss's, credentials. Eventually he looked up and let his glasses fall to his chest again. Standing there with his hands in his pockets, he rocked gently on the balls of his feet as they examined his driver's license and other documentation.

"And how can I help the Federal Bureau of Investigation?" he asked in a mild voice when they returned his wallet to him.

"You can start," Prentiss blurted, "by accounting for your movements this morning." That was not the question she was most anxious to get answered, but it would do.

"Dear me. Am I a suspect in something?" A quick flash of a smile. "I arrived here at ten minutes to eleven this morning," he replied. "I'm always late on Wednesdays. From nine o'clock until ten-thirty, I was at the Crowley County Senior Center, teaching sweet little old boomer ladies who are sliding gracefully – but inevitably – into dementia how to dance the Hustle."

"The Hustle?" Prentiss echoed blankly.

"Yes, Little Miss Agent. The Hustle. You know." His body and his leather-clad hips moved smoothly as he sang, "'Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl...'"

Emily tried not to stare. This man was at once so obviously Jason Gideon, and at the same time, so absolutely unlike the man she had served with.

"Where is Aaron Hotchner?" Rossi asked.

Enormous, gentle brown eyes crinkled in confusion. "I don't believe that I know her. I thought I heard on talk radio news that all the little girls were being returned safely to their families?" He looked from Prentiss to Rossi and back again with an expression of concern. "Or did I miss something? And can we sit down?" He gestured them into the booth.

"Aaron Hotchner is a supervisory special agent with the FBI," Prentiss said as she sat down, resentful that Gideon was forcing her to state the obvious. "He has met with foul play and he is missing. What do you know about him?"

"Only what you've just told me, Little Miss Agent. Are you here to search the restaurant? Because if you are, I'd appreciate if you did it now, before the dinner rush starts."

"You seem willing," Rossi said.

Thaddeus Bell fished a ring of keys from his pocket. "Look, fella, in the interest of helping the forces of truth and justice and nobility and all whenever it's in my power, here are the keys to the Belle Pepper. And here are the keys to my house, my car, my truck, and my boat. The truck's out back, the car's in the garage at home, and my boat's at Wide Bend Marina, slip eleven. Her name is _Starling_."

Rossi smiled gently. "After the bird, or after the FBI trainee in _Silence of the Lambs_?"

"Yes," he replied blandly and ambiguously. "Try not to mess things up too badly, will you? I have only a few material possessions, but they're very nice, and I like to keep them orderly."

Prentiss found herself distracted by a framed motto in, of all things, Farsi. She recognized the script, but knew only a few words of the language, and could not read it at all.

Thaddeus Bell's gaze followed hers. "Bit of a misstatement," he said affably. "It means 'Any pawn can be a king.' Which, strictly speaking, is inaccurate, even in regard to chess. A pawn that makes its way across the board can become anything but a king. Usually a queen, though. On the plus side, queens are substantively more powerful than kings on the chessboard, such a nice break from real life, yes?"

_And this is what happens when a master interrogator takes on another master interrogator_, Prentiss realized. _There are so many potential interpretations to that statement that it will take hours to figure out exactly what he's saying_.

"On the other hand," Bell/Gideon observed, "the opposite applies to real life with chilling accuracy." He looked each of them in the eye individually, briefly. "Any king can wind up a pawn. And now, will you get your search over and done with?"

Rossi's phone vibrated. He checked the faceplate and excused himself. "Morgan," he told Prentiss as he slid out of the booth to step outside.

Prentiss found herself at the end of her patience. Maybe someone else should have come along. Maybe she was still too off her game from the morning's traumas. "God damn it," she growled across the booth, "where in the fuck is Hotch?"

He studied her with those familiar piercing eyes, and they twinkled. Was this sonuvabitch _laughing_ at her? "That would be your FBI friend? Safe, for the moment, I should imagine. Wouldn't you like to keep him that way?"

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

In spite of the fact that he now knew that their names were Opie and Danny, he continued to think of them as Asshole and Pet Thug.

Their job now, as articulated by Jason-fucking-Gideon before he slithered off, was to dump him into a trench at the rear of the property and scrape dirt into and over the trench with a bulldozer.

He tried to school his responses, but two thoughts overwhelmed him. The first was abject terror at the notion of being buried alive. The second, worse than the first, was the image, the look and sound and feel and smell and taste of his soon-to-be parentless son. _Oh, Jack, I am so very, very sorry ..._

Danny grabbed his shirt and hissed, "I have a message from the Man for you." Bending down with his lips right on Aaron's ear, he breathed, "He says to tell you, 'Could you stop being such a goddamn hero for just a few minutes? Is that so goddamn much to ask?'"

And something within him cracked. Either he was really to be spared for some incomprehensible reason and he would see Jack again, or Gideon wanted to torture him with false hope, so as to inflict more agony when he betrayed him yet again. Whichever interpretation it might be, he had lost the battle for any kind of self-possession. He broke down into body- and soul-wrenching sobs.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Derek Morgan sat on the long trestle table among a few random leftover bread sticks and small plastic containers of salad dressing and watched the men dismantling their conference room as he spoke into his cell phone.

"It's bad," he said to Rossi, not even bothering to try disguising his rage. "It's really bad. Fucking joint-action team, Counter-Terrorism and our old pals in Homeland Insecurity have swooped in. They smell Cornsilk and they have all the goddamn answers. They've completely taken over. That's taken over as in, taken over _everything_. If we'd like to participate, they'll issue us assignments. I believe they would just as soon see us pack up and get back on our plane and let the professionals handle it."

"And Hotch?"

"Lead guy says he might just wind up collateral damage. Shame, but it would be Cornsilk to blame, not them. Rossi, I am so close to–" Morgan was learning his administration lessons well from Hotchner. He nodded encouragingly at a shocked and hollow-eyed JJ and Reid. Brief but big confident smile. _Don't worry_, his expression told them. _We'll get past this. We always do_.

"What have you been working on?" Rossi asked.

"Playing Six Degrees of the Brotherhood of Cornsilk," he replied. "Geraldine Emsworth, Tina, Kristi Walker's dad. This is freakin' big, Dave. It's just huge. And these newbies are just positive that the entire membership of Cornsilk is about to bunker down someplace where they can just mop them up. Like, do they ever learn from their mistakes?"

"Well, if they do bunker down it'll be without their mighty leader. We have him here at the Belle Pepper, and I'm damned if I'll let him leave for anything."

"Then it's definitely–"

"Oh, hell, yes," said Rossi. "But he's got some serious personality changes. Serious changes."

"He doesn't know you?"

"He knows exactly who we are. And why we're there. Superior asshole."

"Then stay there. No sense in you coming back here and having to watch our efforts being just swept aside as irrelevant."

"Has anybody seen Chipsey?"

"That's a good question. I think I'll send JJ and Reid out for, ah, soft drinks and some decent coffee."

When he hung up, Derek Morgan rolled his head around, trying to relieve the tension in his neck muscles. At least for the moment, he was chief of their little band, and he would do whatever it took to keep them in the game.


	7. Chapter 7

**My adorable pet beta and I have kicked this around as well as we can, but I really wanted to upload it before tomorrow morning. I'm having extensive dental/maxillofacial surgery tomorrow, and I have no idea how well my brain will work on painkillers. Or if it will work. So if there are lapses that we managed to miss, I'll fix them (I hope) by Monday.**

**There is a veritable fluff fondue of an epilogue mostly written, but I figure that it's easier to wait for than a will-Hotch-live. So, next week, fer shurr, on that.**

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Seven**

_**Night of the Living Cornsilk**_

There was a folded slip of coral-colored paper tucked under the driver's side windshield wiper of the number two SUV. JJ and Reid looked at it, looked at each other, then back at the sheet of paper. JJ said, "I'll take it." She dug around in her bag for evidence handling gloves and snapped them on.

When she opened it, she laughed. "'Come One, Come All, to the Crowley County Fall Festival, this Friday through Sunday,'" she read aloud. "There's a list of all the activities. Food booths. Pony and camel rides. _Camel rides_? Karaoke. Midway games. Local bands. Fireworks. Thrill rides for kids and adults of all ages. Casino. Art fair. Bake sale. God, I love small town life, Spence. Sometimes I miss it so much that it hurts."

He craned his neck and peered around them. "Papers just like it on everyone's windshield that I can see from here," he said.

JJ tucked the ad in her bag, followed (sheepishly) by the latex gloves. "I may have overreacted, but I won't apologize for it. You drive? Me drive?"

"You drive," Reid said. "You're a better driver, and I'm a better navigator."

She arched an eyebrow. "The Bureau's philosophy of cross-training–"

"I'm too pissed off to drive, Jay."

"I hear you." She clambered in on the driver's side. Reid settled into shotgun position, with a map of Crowley County and the local telephone directory – which was not much thicker than a graphic novel – balanced on his bony knees. "I have some worries and some questions, and now I don't know what to do about them. Where first? The Sterling Inn?"

"That works. Talk to me, JJ. Tell me what you're thinking about. We can exchange concerns. Turn right at this corner. It's just off Commerce."

"Let's start with our usual routine. When there are multiple victims and no dump sites, we almost always send one team to the first victim's family, and another to the most recent victim's family. Do you know where I'm going with this?"

Reid ran his fingers through his hair. Sometimes his fingers paused as though he just could not get used to having shorter locks. "Yes. If Randall Walker hadn't been bumped off World of Warcraft and told his teacher about what he heard from the kitchen, Morgan and Rossi would have gone to the Bakers' – and I agree with you, we would be missing four agents now instead of one."

"Or it could have been you, Spence. You don't always stay back to do the geographic profile."

"It could have been you, too, JJ. Hotch calls on you a lot for kids and adolescent girls."

JJ peered up through the windshield at the western sky. "Big storm coming through soon," she said. "Look at the size of those thunderheads."

Reid muttered something that included the words "cumulonimbus," "inversion," and "tropopause."

JJ shoved affectionately at his shoulder. "You know, if you were trying to tell me that big fat clouds that grow upwards spawn thunderstorms, I already knew it and I could have told _you_ – and in words of one syllable, too."

"'Thunderstorms' has three syllables," he said, still watching the sky. "What worries me is, who put up that roadblock? It wasn't Chief Jaworski, and it wasn't the DEA. They said their activity was limited to Jefferson County. But someone had a roadblock set up somewhere along that road just above the ice cream stand. Otherwise, why dump Emily?"

"Could Counter-Terrorism already been involved? Without informing Jaworski? I'm starting to think that's what was going on, 'cause there's no way they could have put together a whole joint operation and moved it into place within six hours. And if they already had their sights on it, well, it would have been a really useful thing to know. We would probably have reacted a little differently to the disappearances if we had suspected that Cornsilk was coming back to life."

Reid chuckled. "Ooh, Cornsilk comes back to life. You make it sound like a zombie movie: _Night of the Living Cornsilk_. And there's the Sterling, to your left. Green metal awning. Is that a parking spot?"

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

.

Opie wrapped loop after loop of duct tape around Hotchner's left upper arm and his left leg, securing them both to something that felt like wood and smelled of creosote. A railroad tie, probably. When he was done, he climbed out of the trench, grunting and cursing.

Danny/Pet Thug remained, close by Aaron's head. He cut away the blindfold. Hotchner opened his eyes, blinking even in the overcast light, and turned his head from side to side. The trench he lay in went well below the soil line and into clay – and it had the approximate dimensions of a grave, although narrower at the bottom than higher up.

Another small tug, and the gag also fell away.

"Try to behave yourself," Pet Thug said in a sardonic voice. "We're going to put a tarp over you."

Hotchner shook his head and made negative noises. His tongue was not yet ready to cooperate.

"Hush," Danny/Pet Thug said, tapping him on the jaw. "Don't make me regret trying to make you more comfortable. You're forgetting who's in charge.

"Hey, Opie? The tarp?" Aaron heard the sound of a plastic tarp being shaken out repeatedly, then he was completely covered by something dull blue that smelled like earth and dead leaves.

"I'll get the engine started up," Opie announced.

"Nah, don't bother. Just go on back up to the house. I'll finish this up here." Danny/Pet Thug knelt at Hotchner's head and raised his face, then tucked a corner of the tarp under it. Speaking quietly, he said, "Let's save you a little misery and get this over with quickly, shall we?" Aaron's eyes drifted from the box cutter in Danny's hands to the, to the – his brain fried again.

_That makes no sense._

"Look at me," Danny commanded. "Let's end this."

Hotchner struggled to raise his head higher. He had seen so much of both the bad and good in people that he did not expect Pet Thug to be a monster. What he saw was an unremarkable man with a square face, tousled light hair, and hard gray eyes. Small scattering of freckles. Red shirt. Wedding ring. Left ear pierced, but no earring in it. The face of an ordinary man just doing his job. Aaron met the man's gaze and nodded. His eyes opened wide and he jerked convulsively as Danny touched the edge of the box cutter to his throat and raked it quickly from one side to the other.

Then he lowered Hotchner's head back down into the clay and the blood that pooled on the edge of the tarp.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

By five-thirty, the first customers for dinner were starting to appear at Belle Pepper. Considering the minuscule size of the town and its county, Emily would not have expected any kind of crowd on a Wednesday night, but then she recalled that there were only three non-fast-food places to eat in the whole county. One had a choice of the Sunset Steak House, Viola's, which was more of a family diner and kept limited hours, and the Belle Pepper.

"The BP," with its ambiance, parking, dance floor, and live band Thursday through Sunday, provided Crowley County with a reasonably classy destination.

From their booth to the right of the entrance, Tad Bell, he of allegedly Polish descent, could see his clientèle as they arrived. Not surprisingly, he knew most of them. Polish or not (mostly not, from their accents, Emily decided) many people greeted Tad with a wave, a handshake, or a high five, and by repeating his cheerful "_Dzień dobry_!" (To attractive females, he said, "_Dzień dobry, droga_!")

"Do you have any idea how surreal it is to greet people in Polish, in an Italian establishment?" Emily asked. She knew it really wasn't all _that_ surreal. In her perambulations, she had encountered such culinary puzzlers as Hernandez's House of Hot Hunan, and Ishikawa's Pizzeria. She was just making conversation, trying to get a better feel for this Tad Bell personality Gideon had assumed.

His answer was to greet the next person to enter, a man of Oriental ancestry who was evidently dining alone, with, "_Buona sera, Paolo, cugino! Come è la tua moglie bella?_"

"Yeah, sure," the man said, ignoring the question about his lovely wife. "You got the crab tonight?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Cool."

This part of Tad Bell was not unfamiliar to Prentiss. Jason Gideon had a healthy streak of jackassery in his arsenal of personality quirks. He had often used it to amuse both himself and the team.

His face became serious when Dave Rossi re-entered the restaurant, his cell phone still to his ear. "Your friend works too hard, Little Miss Agent," he remarked.

The "Little Miss Agent" bit was really old, but she was damned if she would give him the satisfaction of knowing he was getting to her. "He has a tough job," she replied. Thinking, _You should know. It used to be your job_. _You jerk._

Rossi snapped his phone shut and slid back into the booth, but this time facing the door and blocking Tad Bell from leaving.

"I would like to be able to greet my customers," Bell said, but without obvious annoyance. "Although I'm sure I can trust you to greet them for me, if you're willing. Is your searching party on its way yet?"

Rossi ignored that. "Tell me about the property you own."

Bell/Gideon took a pencil out of his breast pocket and began to fiddle with it. When he saw the agents eyeing it, he produced two more and handed them out. They were striped in red, white, and green, and stamped _Belle Pepper Fine Italian Dining Experience, 17200 Creosote Road at Harley, Thaddeus Bell, prop., _followed by the hours and various forms of contact information.

"I have a little over two acres," he said, "along Haverfield Road between County three and four, about two miles from Chipsey's place. I'm sure you've met Chipsey by now. He can't resist excitement. But back to my property. It contains a house, a barn, a greenhouse, a stable, and a paddock. Also a silo that I really need to have pulled down. Nothing else. Nothing else _anywhere_," he added emphatically.

Rossi was watching him intently. "Nothing on Gaineyville Road?"

Bell snorted. "Nothing. Everything I own in this world is tied up in my house on Haverfield or in this place."

"Then let's talk a little bit about Cornsilk."

Bell nodded. "It's about time you got around to it."

"Are you aware that Cornsilk owns property on Gaineyville Road?"

Prentiss repressed a gasp of satisfaction. There was progress being made.

"I know that Bill Sheldon and his boys have property out there," Bell replied with casual ease, "and I have always presumed that they were pretty thick with Cornsilk."

"Have you been out there yourself?"

Bell's tone remained calm and somewhat chatty. "I've been past it – it's hard _not_ to pass it if you're trying to get from my place to the seeds-and-weeds place on Thornhill."

"Then you wouldn't know about any major meetings being held out there tonight."

Bell leaned forward. Deep vertical furrows appeared between his brows. "One," he said, lifting his right forefinger, "I'm an out-of-owner, a restaurateur, whose masculinity they consider suspect and whose nose they consider entirely too Semitic. I'm hardly the type they'll be inviting to their pig roasts or cross burnings or whatever their quaint traditional amusements might be. Not any time soon. And two," and he raised his middle finger beside the first, "and I cannot stress this too strongly, stay away from there tonight. Stay as far away as you can without actually leaving Crowley County."

"And why would you recommend that? What do you know?"

A bark of surprise. "Good God, fella! What every man with ears in the county knows. Somebody has pissed off Cornsilk. A pissed-off Cornsilk is a wonder to behold, but only from a safe distance. They're pissed off, but they're confident. Motivated. Surely you know how it was before, how many people they–" His face twisted. "They did horrible things to people." Gesticulating with disgust, he muttered an impressive collection of idiomatic Polish curses and obscenities. Prentiss could follow only about a quarter of it, and that part, not well.

Face dark with passion, Bell reverted to English. "But if you must go rubbernecking, for God's sake keep Troy out of there. They'll rip her to shreds. Literally. Just because she called in the Feds. And she's a fine woman, a wonderful woman. But even a psychotic crack whore wouldn't deserve what they do to women. And nobody escapes from them. Nobody."

Prentiss stared him dead in the eye. "I escaped."

He looked at her with surprise – but not enough surprise, Emily thought.

"When?" he gasped.

"Early this afternoon."

"Oh, is that where the–" He gestured across his own face to where the gag had carved twin lines into her cheeks. When she nodded, he nodded also. "I wondered what that was, dearies, but I thought it would be rude to ask. Good God, that's astonishing. Quite a first."

On the wild possibility that Jason Gideon genuinely had no connection to Cornsilk, Prentiss told him, "That's who has Aaron Hotchner. He was with me."

Intense eyes as black as night bored into hers with all the sorrow in the world but no recognition. "Then you had better hope that he's dead already, because if he's on the entertainment menu for tonight–"

He turned away. "I'm so sorry, little missy," he murmured.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

"This is impossible," Spencer Reid growled, as the first fat droplets of rain fell on their windshield. "Total area of one-point-eight-three miles, total population 14,000. How can we misplace one highly visible man?"

"Maybe he went home and he just isn't picking up?" JJ speculated. "Though the only really unique feature is his hair, and nobody's gonna be running around bareheaded until this thing is over, oh, _crap_, Spence!" she wailed as hail smaller than golf balls – but substantially bigger than, say, black olives – started to thunder down on the roof and hood of their SUV. JJ guided the vehicle to the curb in a no-parking zone, shut off the engine, and flicked on the hazard flashers.

Hailstones plummeted onto the pavement, then bounced up like some lunatic demonstration of nuclear physics. Or a bleached-out version of Henry's little lawn mower push toy, very analog for a digital age, that sent brightly colored balls dancing and flying as he moved it across the family room floor. A little spring coil created a music box style rendition of "Pop Goes the Weasel" [Will always said it should be "Grazing in the Grass," which was one of the reasons she loved him so much.]

She really, really missed her son and her partner.

Reid's phone sounded, and it was Derek. JJ wondered whether she was the only person who knew that Spence's ringtone for Morgan was "I'm Too Sexy."

"Yes," he said, his voice loud and his finger in his right ear. "We're at the corner of – ah, Commerce and Monroe. Yes, north side of the street, across from Viola's Diner. You can't miss it; it's a kind of lurid purple with olive green trim. Yeah, that one. OK, we'll be watching for you. And them."

He rang off and put the phone away, then unsnapped his holster and removed his revolver.

"Spence?"

He spun the cylinder, checking his load. "Cornsilk is on the move," he said. "They're out looking for us. Probably a team of three; that's apparently how they operate. One team jumped Derek when he stepped outside to look at the storm. He got one of them, and Bev McClintick nailed another one. They're about five blocks from here, on foot."

A chill shot through JJ. "Isn't that just too convenient? For him to be right there on the scene?"

"He told Morgan that he'd been there watching for trouble for a couple hours. Derek seems to believe him. Either that, or he wants Chipsey to think he believes him."

JJ checked her own weapon quickly and started the engine again, the better to make a quick getaway if they needed to do so. Beside her, Reid was calmly checking his bag for his speedloaders. Plural. The man who rarely fired his weapon had two speedloaders in a small case, which he clipped to his belt wordlessly.

_Okie-dokie_.

JJ dug her spare magazines from her bag, checked that they were full, and slung them behind the holster for her Glock.

_You want war, guys, I'll give you war._

Four minutes later, the hail vanished. She ran the defogger full blast to keep the windows clear and ran the wipers to remove the last pieces of ice. Reid peered into the external rear view mirror on his side and announced, "Morgan coming up behind us on my side of the street. McClintick's right behind him."

In one of those odd moments of juxtaposition that happen, as JJ prepared for the men to leap into the SUV, a procession of four eighteen-wheelers rumbled past them down Commerce Street. Four trucks hauling folded-up carnival kiddie rides and their power supplies. She spared a few seconds to wonder whether a bloodbath by Cornsilk would shut down the Fall Festival.

Morgan flung himself in the passenger side rear door, followed by Chipsey, whose hat looked like a bird's nest for hailstones. He knocked them off onto the pavement before he closed his door.

The last of the carnival trucks cleared the intersection, and JJ pulled out into the sparse traffic.

"We're going out to Gaineyville Road," Morgan panted. "All hell is about to break loose there."

"Mr. McClintick," Spencer Reid said, "have you located this Dan guy yet? It's pretty important that we find him."

"I haven't," gasped Chipsey, who was (not surprisingly) more out of breath than the awesomely fit Morgan was. "And I stopped looking a couple hours ago when I saw the Sheldon boys prowling as a pack. That's never a good sign, and with Cornsilk back in business, it's even worse. And as for Dan, I'm sure he'll find you."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Emily Prentiss, waddling around in an oversize poncho with "FBI" marked on it in white reflectivetape, had done her share of babysitting in her teen years. Since then, she had read to both Jack Hotchner, who liked to recite stories along with her, and to Henry LaMontagne, who was still at the age where chewing the bindings is quite a popular option.

This explains why she grumbled (loudly, above the storm) to a confused-looking David Rossi that she felt as if she were lost among the Star-Bellied Sneetches. She indicated the massed forces of the joint task force, all of whose ponchos were labeled "FBI" or "DHS" with fluorescent _green_ reflective tape, and said, "They have stars on thars."

"This is the leper colony," Rossi said, and that was what it felt like.

"More of your people," some unpleasant functionary from DHS announced, indicating poncho-swathed forms who had to be Reid, Morgan, JJ, and some other person. "Make sure they keep to your side of the line."

"Oh, yeah," Emily snarled when the man was safely out of earshot. "'Cause you never know when you might catch a bad case of BAU. Assholes," she continued to Rossi. "If it was one of their guys in there, instead of Hotch, they'd have the combat engineering vehicles lined up from here to the Pacific, ready to mow down the goddamn building."

It was by no means a subtle operation. SUVs, EMT vehicles, police vans, the fire department – the scene was a mass of pulsating red, white, and blue lights, against which thirty-some assorted federal officials huddled in their official star-on-thars green-tape ponchos.

And there the BAU folks stood, the furthest of all from the action, so far along the property line that Rossi had suggested they might have to call a cab to get to their version of mission control. When JJ and Reid and Morgan and – of all people – Chipsey [_way to drag along a civilian, Morgan!_] arrived, they also shuffled around and commented on how useless they would be if it came to a firefight.

Except Chipsey, who rocked on his heels and gawked around him wearing an expression of wide-eyed excitement that screamed, _Damn, just like on TV_!

Some schmuck manning a PA system demanded that the members of Cornsilk come out of the building with their hands up.

"Does he really think they're in there thinking, 'damn, that sounds like a good idea'?" Morgan said out of the corner off his mouth.

"Oh, God knows," Emily said. "By the way, Ray from Jaworski's cop shop has a team watching the Belle Pepper, in case the amazing Tad Bell creature decides to join the action." 

The rain diminished to the point that extended conversation was possible, then gathered steam and the wind picked up and a deluge began flying all but horizontally at the poncho-penguin patrol, with and without stars-on-thars.

The ground beneath their shifting, impatient feet turned to soupy mud.

All but one light in the Sheldon house abruptly went out.

"Probably pulled the fuse and there's just a lantern in that window there," Morgan suggested.

Emily stared hatefully at the glow, trying not to imagine what might be happening to Aaron Hotchner in there.

The wind and the rain died down a little again, and an unfamiliar man in a Chicago Cubs ball cap and with his hands deep in the pockets of a fake leather jacket approached their own little group. Just theirs.

"Hi," he said diffidently. "Hey, I need a favor from you guys." He shifted his weight back and forth a few times.

Maybe five-ten, square face, light hair. Something vaguely familiar about his voice.

All of Emily Prentiss's senses went on total alert.

"What I need," the guy said, " is this – I'm gonna run down that way, across there, to over by where that grape arbor is, you see it? And I need you guys to chase me and take me down. And make it real, real good. Can ya help me out?"

"Holy shit," Emily breathed. "You were the guy with Opie. The guy who took Hotch. Let me see you hands."

Moving slowly, his face utterly bland, he withdrew his hands from his pockets. Empty. "Yes, ma'am, Miz Prentiss. I was with Opie Martin. And now I need your people to take me down in a little old blaze of glory real close in to where those old boys in there can get a good look. Can ya help me out?"

"What's your name?"

She didn't expect him to answer, buthe said, "Daniel Hollister, ma'am." He stripped off his jacket, displaying a bright red knit golf shirt. "Y'all ready to chase me down?"

Six people, including an over-eager Chipsey, expressed their willingness to give chase.

"Then let's go," he said, and took off at an alarming pace. Spencer Reid was so motivated that he actually overtook Morgan briefly. Just past the grape arbor, four sets of arms wrapped around Hollister's legs and pinned him down. Chipsey held back, as did David Rossi.

As Morgan snapped the cuffs on him, Hollister panted, "Damn, y'all are good. Now stay down right where you are. Down!" he called back to Rossi and McClintick. 

As they hit the ground, an explosion rocked the small house and sent a shower of debris over their heads. "Stay down," Hollister directed, his voice icy calm.

A second explosion, much more powerful than the first, blew out three walls of the structure. Silhouetted against the flames, several people staggered out into what would be the back yard of the Sheldon residence.

"One more, probably," Hollister said.

One of the surviving stragglers raised a combat carbine.

"Amen," Hollister said. "Come _on_, baby."

A third blast, positioned precisely where the line of stragglers were located, blew them down flat.

"That should be it," Hollister told them. "Up there ahead of me, maybe forty feet farther along, near the peach trees? You see them? There's a trench. Got a tarp over it. Your guy is under the tarp. He should still be in pretty good shape."

The stars-on-thars poncho patrol surged forward toward the ruined building.

Prentiss surged to her feet, her Glock and her LED flashlight in her hands, and slopped through the mud toward the tangled branches of a stand of young peach trees. She sensed people behind her and didn't even bother to look back to see who they were.

The trench was exactly where Hollister had described it. She jumped down into a good two inches of muddy water and yanked the tarp aside.

Aaron Hotchner, still cuffed, soaking wet in spite of the tarp, awash with blood, and duct-taped to a railroad tie, turned a horribly bloodied head toward them. Or had she imagined the movement?

A mindless scramble, and she and Morgan and Rossi crouched over Hotch, whose eyes were open.

Hotchner panted, "Not mine, not mine."

Morgan rolled him slightly to his side. He spat out mud and blood, and the discarded plastic Red Cross blood bag became visible.

"Not mine," Hotchner gasped. "Please! Did he get out? Did he get away?"

"Gideon?"

A small, quick nod. "And Danny."

"We can't find Gideon. He wasn't here. Danny's up there; he told us where to find you."

Hotchner's lips moved. Emily leaned close. "Say again?"

"Thank God."

"So you knew all along?" Rossi asked.

Hotchner nodded wearily.

Much relieved, Rossi scrambled up the side of the trench, calling out something Emily could not hear to somebody she could not see. Morgan groaned, "It's a goddamn miracle. And you knew all along? Jesus. You could have told us."

Emily studied the pale features and puffy eyes for a few seconds, the friction marks on his face that had burned so deep they had torn the skin away, the wrists raw and bleeding from straining against his handcuffs.

"So you always knew it was all a setup."

"Yes." His lips were cracked and dry. His voice was barely audible. He seemed to be enjoying the feel of the rain on his face.

She shook her head and brushed the hair back from his brow. She bent way over and set her mouth right against his ear. "Sir," she whispered, "I have only the greatest respect for you, and this will never go any further than the two of us, right here and right now, but you're a lying sack of shit."

"Yeah, whatever," he breathed, and closed his eyes, at last letting exhaustion carry him away.


	8. To Cancel Half a Line

**OK, so I failed Planning 101 – but there will be an end to it. I had better stop predicting numbers, because characters kept digging in their toes and saying _Do you really think you're through with me?_**

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Eight**

**To Cancel Half a Line**

_The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,  
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit  
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,  
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it._

– _Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_, trans. Edward FitzGerald

The action, the explosions, the incomprehensible movement had left Spencer Reid disoriented. All he knew for absolutely certain was that he and JJ were holding down someone who had identified himself as Daniel Hollister, a man who had approached them.

And Chipsey had said, "He'll find you."

He clearly had some kind of relationship with Cornsilk. He had boasted at the Sterling Inn that the top guy in Cornsilk had Hotchner pleading for his life. He also knew where to find Hotchner. Or Hotchner's body. Or maybe, Reid realized with horror, more explosives. He certainly knew way too much about what Cornsilk did with explosives.

He swiveled his head around at the Joint Task Force team moving cautiously around the ruins of the Sheldon residence, then at the trench by the peach trees. Rossi was at that instant climbing out. The angle of his poncho made him for a moment resemble the common hooded personification of Death. All he needed was a scythe.

"We need a medic over here," Rossi said into his radio, and waved his arm to make himself more visible. "We have an agent down."

"Can you hold him?" Reid howled to JJ over the drumming of the rain on their ponchos as well as on the cracked concrete where they huddled.

"Mr. McClintick and I can take him over to the car," JJ said.

"She sure can, Dr. Reid," their prisoner called. "I'm getting pretty chilly here. I'm not going anywhere. I like being with you and Agent Jareau just fine."

_Interesting that he knows our names. Is he undercover Bureau, or top-level Cornsilk? Or, God help us, both?_

JJ was also looking at Hollister speculatively. "I'll be fine," she said.

Reid took one last look at JJ and stood up. Rossi was moving toward the emergency vehicles. He met Rossi halfway between the trench with Hotch in it and where Hollister had been taken down. "How is he?" he shouted.

"Conscious," Rossi said. "Coherent. No missing pieces."

_Well, conscious was good. Coherent was better. Wait, what?_

Reid blurted, "Were missing pieces a possibility?"

"A likelihood, evidently. We got here in time."

_Just when I think it can't get any creepier._

Rossi moved past Reid, aiming for the veritable parking lot of emergency vehicles, then growled, "Well. Thank God," as a team of two EMT specialists shouldered past him with a collapsed stretcher and two metal carryalls of equipment. "Over there."

The wind shifted and Spencer got a face full of rain. He wiped it away with both hands and kept moving toward the trench, then looked down.

Hotch wasn't conscious now. Morgan supported his limp body while Prentiss unlocked the handcuffs, then sliced away black tape that secured him to a railroad tie. – _Jeez, these people are really into their creosote. – _His shirt was dark with blood. Reid wondered where the wound was.

Paramedics climbed down into the trench, directing Derek and Emily to leave and make room for them. No, he had misinterpreted. They asked the agents to open the stretcher for them.

Reid glanced around again, still trying to absorb the situation. He saw a man in a short, light poncho scrambling, huddling in on himself against the rain, moving toward one of the outbuildings. There seemed to be nobody else free to watch the guy, who could be Cornsilk, for all he knew, so he turned his body slightly and slid his revolver out of his holster.

In time to see a muzzle flash as a machine pistol ripped out a dozen or so shots. One – no, both of the paramedics and Aaron Hotchner tumbled back into the trench. Prentiss and Morgan threw themselves flat.

They were better marksmen, but he was in the better position to fire. He dropped to one knee, aimed, held his breath, and squeezed. He could not have cared less if he became the next target; his only interest was in bringing the shooter down.

Another shot, this one from Morgan. Prentiss was on her radio, in a calm but commanding voice. "Agents down. Medics down."

The ghostly man with the machine pistol was as committed to completing his job as Spencer was. He spewed what was probably the remainder of his clip to the right of where Reid crouched. Reid fired again, once, twice, and saw the shooter topple backwards.

He turned quickly behind him to his right and saw JJ Jareau – please, God, not JJ! - struggling to ease Daniel Hollister to the ground. Even as he did so, he fumbled a speedloader out and tucked it into the pocket of his poncho.

No, she was not hit. Hollister was. JJ sighted with her Glock, ready to return fire. Even through the gathering darkness and the relentless rain, the anger and determination shone through on those pale, delicate features.

"Civilian down," JJ said over the air. Then, "Correction, agent down."

Shit. She was hit after all?

Reid sprang to his feet and sprinted through the soup and goop to JJ's side. "Where are you hit?" he called at her. She shook her head.

"Him," she shouted back. "Can you stop the bleeding?"

Reid bent and inspected Hollister. He had a whole bouquet of wounds in his chest and abdomen that were not so much bleeding as seeping, and then being washed down by the rain. His eyes were open, unaffected by the precipitation. Spencer fumbled his flashlight from his pocket and chanced a quick look at them; his pupils didn't contract in the light at all.

"Shit. That doesn't look good," McClintick said, leaning close to Reid. "Doesn't look good at all." At which point he toppled over head first onto Hollister's body. For a split second, Spencer thought it was a dramatic gesture of grief. Then he saw the torn places in McClintick's poncho where the bullets had ripped through.

"Can we get some medical help over here?" JJ said into her radio, her voice as cold and angry as he had ever heard it.

"If they're taking us out," Chipsey said, still bent over, "Bell's probably on the list, too."

"So are all three–" Before he could finish the question, there was a deep rumbling and shivering as though a freight train were passing by, then something shook him ferociously. _Shit. It's a tornado. It's an earthquake. It's a tornado and an earthquake._ Aware of how strange it seemed for him to do so, Reid clutched at the corpse of Daniel Hollister for balance.

"Spence!" JJ shouted. He looked up and followed her gaze to where the emergency vehicles were arrayed. Two – no, three – no, four of them now tipped alarmingly, but in slow motion, toward what had become a hole in the ground, half-lit by flickers of flame and half-obscured by thick, greasy smoke. A full chorus of various vehicle security systems began beeping and bawping and chirping in protest at the sudden movement. Over that cacophony, voices screamed and moaned.

_OK, this is Hell_, Reid thought, _and that must be its mouth_. He struggled to interpret everything that was happening so he could plan his next move. Some primitive part of him shuddered, some throwback to demon stories from his childhood. He half expected terrible, slimy creatures to slither out of the hole and rise up to shamble through the streets, preying on living beings.

_You can conjure some of the most godawful useless imagery_, he scolded himself._ Get real._

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Forty feet to the northeast of where Spencer Reid and JJ Jareau huddled, Derek Morgan entertained his own images of Hell. His involved five rain soaked, muddied adults scrambling for footing in a trench growing slipperier by the moment, awash with rainwater, blood, and vomit. Well, two of the people were scrambling. One EMT was definitely dead. The other was alive, but unconscious. Aaron Hotchner was alive and conscious but about as confused and vague a human being as Morgan had ever seen.

Dave Rossi sat on the lip of the trench, legs dangling, as he scavenged through the EMTs' supplies for anything remotely useful to non-professionals in first aid. He also, unhelpfully, kept trying to describe the weirdness that gripped the vehicle parking area.

Morgan felt that things were quite weird enough already, thank you very much, and he didn't need to know anything else to get concerned about. He had lost his radio somewhere in the mud, either down here in the goop or up on the surface. (His gun, too, although he hadn't noticed it yet.)

Rossi passed Prentiss a huge wad of gauze, which she passed to Morgan, who tried to give it to Hotch. "Here," he said, "hold this on your head – Hotch, what the fuck happened to your hand?" He frowned at the welts that criss-crossed the unit chief's palm and fingers.

"I'm OK," Hotch said, unhelpfully. It was the freakin' Official Aaron Hotchner Mantra, uninformative, inaccurate, but his default response on all occasions of stress. _I'm fine. I'm all right. I'm OK._

"Fuck. Well, here. Take this, hold it here." He slapped the gauze into Hotchner's left hand, placed it firmly on the left side of his head where a bullet had creased his scalp, and said, "Damn it, I said, hold it."

"I'm all right," Hotchner slurred.

"Suit yourself," Morgan sighed, and let Aaron's hand fall back down into his lap.

"Hollister and McClintick are dead," Rossi announced. "JJ thinks that Hollister might have been undercover."

"FBI, or DHS?" Prentiss panted. They had positioned their two injured trench-mates sitting on the railroad tie. While Hotchner managed to stay relatively upright, the EMT kept sliding sideways in spite of Emily's best efforts and toppling face first into the water, as though having a contest with himself to see which would kill him faster, drowning or exsanguination.

"Didn't say," Dave replied. He took his mobile out of his pocket, stared at the faceplate, and said, "Rossi." Then, "OK, thanks, Ray. Thanks for keeping us in the loop."

Rossi leaned over almost chattily. "Keeps getting more interesting by the minute. Jaworski's man says Tad Bell just tried to duck out of the restaurant. They caught him at the back and took him into custody. They're on the way to the station with him, but they'll have to just stick him in a cell and let the Joint Force deal with it. They're coming out here. More emergency vehicles are coming from Jefferson and Springfield Counties. Jaworski will be with them."

Prentiss grabbed another fistful of gauze and pressed it to the EMT's abdomen. "Can they just skip the jail and bring him directly out here? I'd sure like to talk to him."

"This is hardly the best place for an interview."

Prentiss dragged the injured EMT more nearly upright again. "I want to talk to him before Homeland Screw-Uppity gets to him."

"Valid point." Rossi got his phone back out. "Your wish is my command."

Prentiss snorted. "That's a new one."

"I figured it out," Morgan said to Prentiss. "Only thing saving this from a complete clusterfuck was that the shooter aimed high first. He hit him–" A nod toward the dead EMT "–in the head first, which made him drop Hotch's head and shoulders. If he had started by aiming low, the shooter coulda taken out all three of them. These are through-and-throughs."

Prentiss shot him a who-gives-a-shit look and repositioned her EMT again.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

In a windowless room at Quantico that would seem claustrophobic to anyone who didn't consider its score-and-more of computer screens better than any picture window, Penelope Garcia peered through the little window she had opened to watch Homeland Security's tech analysts at work. Since they had demonstrated no interest in sharing what they knew with the BAU, Garcia picked it up the hard way. Well, for her, the easy way. Infinitely simpler than negotiating layers of bureaucracy.

At present she was enjoying their TA's background check on Thaddeus Bell. She always pictured this TA, whose name was Grover, as furry and blue and inoffensive. She had been stunned when she met him at some techie summit or other, not that she actually expected him to be furry and blue, but she had expected him to sound like Frank Oz, and he didn't. He sounded more like another puppet, ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's Walter. Looked kind of like him, too. But she still preferred to keep the image of a furry blue TA Muppet at the keyboard.

Grover flew through files documenting Tadeusz Markus Brzeg's arrival in Toronto from Katowice in September of 1923, and his Canadian-born children, three boys and a girl. All but one child died young, without issue. He had only one descendant living, his grandson Thaddeus, son of Josef Witold Brzeg, who had run a restaurant in Schenectady and died in '07 of a stroke, at the age of 76. _Check, check, and check._

Grover was meticulous in checking the history of the sons. Sensibly, he ignored the daughter, who – according to data Garcia had lovingly and persuasively fabricated herself – had died in an auto vs bicycle accident at age eleven. If he had possessed the tech genius to penetrate this façade, which had been a work of art even for Penelope, he would have discovered that Elisabeta Brzega had survived to adulthood and had married Isaiah Elias Gideon, to whom she had given a son, Jason.

Oh, and she was still alive.

_Me, 129,_ she thought,_ DHS, still zip_.

She switched her attention to the TA who was exploring the Web presence of the Brotherhood of the Cornsilk. It wasn't easy to find; it was basically a couple FTP sites with names that meant nothing to anybody, hidden behind a dozen or so elaborate firewalls that might have protected them if they had stuck with simple and effective. Get fancy, get fucked, was her motto for Internet security.

They called themselves "Silkies," which gave Penelope the giggles.

If any of their number was aware that Silkies was a brand of pantyhose and a breed of chicken, nobody seemed to have mentioned it. It was also an alternative spelling for a Celtic supernatural who had the ability to change from a seal to a person and back to a seal.

_Ooh. Ahh._ As scary as "cornsilk."

_Have to wonder what these guys were smoking when they came up with this shit_.

Thousands upon thousands of files, most of them text or audio. Maybe a couple hundred video files. One of them was time-stamped only a few hours ago.

She clicked "Open."

And stared. And clawed at her face.

She vomited into her wastebasket, fumbled for the keyboard shortcut to close the file, then fled the IT center for the cool privacy of the women's rest room on that floor, sobbing with fury.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Now that the rain had diminished to occasional sprinkles, JJ pulled back the hood on her poncho. There were a total of five "hot spots" where action had gone down: her spot on what had been a garden path in the days when Mrs. Sheldon had tried to impose order and beauty on the property; the parking area; the Sheldon residence itself; the trench to the northeast, and the area to the north where the shooters (there had been two, they discovered) had fired at the EMTs and at JJ and company on the garden path.

Chipsey McClintick had been bundled off unwillingly on a stretcher. Three bullets had penetrated him, all on his right side: his shoulder, his ribs, and his hip. Any other shots intended for him had struck Dan Hollister instead, a fact that sent him into the blackest despair. "I wish I knew his real name," he told JJ before the EMTs got to him. "He was thoroughly professional. It was a privilege to watch him work."

"Was he FBI, or DHS?"

"Neither. Well, he was assigned to DHS, but he was BATF. An explosives specialist."

"And you?"

He shook his head. "Just an interfering civilian." His eyes still on Hollister, he said, "He was married and had four kids, I know that much. One of them's getting married next month." And he went along with the EMTs as glumly as though he had been arrested.

The lead EMT asked JJ if she would take the cuffs off Daniel Hollister. Or whatever his name had been. She was embarrassed that she hadn't thought about it, even after she knew he was Federal. She rolled him over and unlocked them.

There were at least three other bodies beyond the inferno of the Sheldon house. An EMT from the trench, and the two shooters. One had been armed with a MAC-10; the other, an Uzi. Jennifer Jareau wondered at the, well, the _chutzpah_ of a group opposed to Jews and the state of Israel arming anyone with a machine pistol developed and manufactured in Israel.

Words to say, phrases to use, occupied her mind, even though – given that the action was a success – DHS and Bureau Counter Terrorism would want all the microphone time. Which suited JJ just fine. The hunt for words was something automatic. She was unhappy and confused about the role that BAU had played in this mess.

She was also unhappy that the team would certainly be stuck here at least through the weekend. Body count alone dictated that the unit would be involved in the mop-up, but, Lord God, she missed Will and their sweet baby boy, who was finally at the point where he had the beginnings of a real personality.

She watched the one EMT's body being removed from the trench. Hell, by this time it should have a capital letter, the Trench, it was such a significant part of the crime scene. Nobody else would care, but JJ also composed all the news releases for the unit.

Emily and Derek, almost unrecognizably caked with wet clay, walking beside the gurney that Aaron was strapped to. Both of them looked completely played out.

And she was suddenly unbearably sick of this job, of seeing people like Emily and Derek, like Hotch, people who were more than family to her, once again stepping into harm's way. And when it was all over, when they had been patched up and express-laned through the Bureau shrink-of-the-month's office, they would march right back into the line of fire, because that was their job.

_That's what I'll do. I'll ask Will to come out and bring Henry. And I'll starting feeling my way around the idea that I'm thinking about quitting._

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Her face washed, her tears blotted away, Garcia opened the door to her IT center and it was still going on. _Still going on._ She thought she had shut it off, but she hadn't even killed the audio.

So simple. So low-tech. Stick the needle deep into the sole of the foot. Wiggle it around vigorously. Repeat. It took three Silkies pinning him to the floor to control his frantic thrashing. She doubted that she could ever forget the sound of those desperate, inarticulate cries.

She yanked the cord to that particular monitor.

Fumbled for a facial tissue.

Hands trembling, she called Kevin, who was working a double shift over in Organized Crime. "I need a favor, Lamb," she whispered. "And I need it now. It takes priority over everything else in the world."

"We're at a break point here, Sweet Pea," he replied. "Your wish is my command."

"I'm sending you encrypted mail. It includes IP and FTP addresses and passwords I've backhacked. I need that whole friggin' server destroyed. I don't care if every other client on it is a friggin' hospital for dying children. I want it dead. If you can do it anonymously, great. If you can't do it invisibly, connect with Gretchen. Gretch has all of my latest, greatest, and up-to-datest malware. Same password as on Florence, but an upper-case W inserted in third position and a tilde instead of the exclamation point. I have no problem taking the fall for this, Sweetness."

"Got it," Kevin said, and she knew he did, because he was pretty damn exceptional himself. "Just so you know, you don't have to explain to me. I trust your word to the end of the world. If you say a site or a server has to die, I'm on it, and I'm not afraid of getting in trouble, either."

"I swear to God, Kev, if we can pull this off I will cheerfully go to jail for it. When you see it – if you see it – and you're better off not seeing it – you'll understand. Nobody can access those files ever again. Just do it, Precious, and I will owe you for ever and ever."

"No problem," he said. "I love you, Sweet Pea."

"I love you, too, Sweetness."


	9. One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Nine**

**One Man's Ceiling is Another Man's Floor**

After insisting that Thaddeus Bell be brought out to the Gaineyville Road site rather than to the police station, Prentiss let him sit there, cuffed in the back of a squad car, until Troy Jaworski showed up. When Rossi protested, she said that, A, a little waiting right there at the scene of the bloodbath might sharpen his memory, and, B, the presence of Chief Jaworski, a woman with whose affections he had apparently trifled, as the Victorians would put it, might increase the pressure on him.

Rossi studied her, brows knit. "You do realize he's working with us, not against us?"

She made a dismissive noise. "Or so Hotch said. I'm not prepared to take anything positive an abductee tells me about his captors and run with it, at least not until he gets a little psychological distance from the ordeal."

And Rossi, recognizing his own advice from his first book, acceded to her judgment.

Which was how it happened that Emily got a chance to sit and make girl talk with Troy Jaworski at a metal table in a mobile command post, a hulking tracked vehicle that looked military but was painted bright blue with the Homeland Security logo prominently displayed on all sides. Outside, tow trucks and a tank recovery vehicle borrowed from the National Guard continued to drag rescue trucks out of the crater where Cornsilk's ordnance supply bunker had once been.

Jaworski's hair was pinned back on top with a filigreed gold clip. She had applied lipstick and a subtle slash of eye shadow.

"Pretty barrette," Emily said, and it was. Shaped like a scroll, it had two intricately inlaid peacocks, all coral, jade and lapis, one on each side, and the letters _LBPO_ in Gothic script. "What do the letters stand for?"

"Los Brazos Parole Offices, for all know," she replied, her face stony.

Well, that line of conversation wasn't going to go anywhere.

"This other person that you think is Tad Bell," she said, "was he one of the good guys, or–"

"One of the best," Prentiss told her. "I hope that he still is."

"That's good to know."

"I think that Agent Rossi was tickled to meet a fan," Emily said. "I don't think he ever gets over that feeling of satisfaction that someone appreciates what he has done."

"I'm a huge admirer of the BAU," Troy said. "Of profiling in general. I still have friends with Detroit Metro and the Ontario Provincial Police. I got almost moment by moment updates a couple years back when you did that enormous bust at the pig farm. A lot of my friends who had blown off my interest in profiling became true believers after that."

Just remembering it could exhaust Prentiss. Days and days documenting people's grief and wasted lives, then coming home to less than three hours of sleep, then that traumatized dad turned murderer, Patrick Meyers – and then the Reaper's attack on Hotch.

"That was quite a case," Emily said. "Quite a week." _Talk about understatement!_

She made a couple more stabs at connecting, woman to woman, but Troy Jaworski was either too canny or too wounded (or both) to respond to them. They sat in silence then, and waited for Rossi to bring Tad Bell over to the command post.

To Prentiss's surprise, when Bell did show up, he was in the custody of one of Jaworski's people, not David Rossi. And because it was a cop, not a BAU member, bringing him in Bell was still in handcuffs.

_I don't care if I never see another set of cuffs. Ever._

Thaddeus Bell still wore the leather pants and paisley shirt, but now he also wore a matching leather jacket. He nodded amiably to Emily, bowed with a smile toward Troy, and took the chair the deputy directed him to.

"Thank you, Brad," Jaworski said. "You can go now."

Brad touched the bill of his cap to her, nodded to Prentiss, and departed.

"Shall I take those off you?" Emily asked.

His smile could be so damnably warm. He could make you think you were the only person in the room – or in the world, for that matter. But the person he smiled at was Troy. "Depends on what makes Chief Jaworski comfortable," he said.

"Sure, go ahead," Troy said, her voice faint.

Emily stood and unlocked the cuffs, then returned to her chair. "So," she said as he rubbed gently at his wrists with his fingertips, "how long have you been Thaddeus Bell?"

"I looked that up when you showed up in town," he said. "Two years, two months, and seventeen days. It was a formal, legal name change, by the way. It's all on record in Maryland."

Chief Jaworski leaned forward. "And why did you change your name?"

His gaze was direct and matter-of-fact. "I no longer wished to be Jason Gideon."

Eyes huge, Jaworski gasped. "_The_ Jason Gideon? Oh, my God," and blushed like a smitten schoolgirl, her hands splayed across her face. "I mean, I'm sorry, I–"

"Which is why I'm delighted to be Thaddeus Bell," he continued. "And I don't want anything of my former life to leak out, _droga_. This is where and what and who I wish to be. _This is my life now_ – and I'm as proud of the Belle Pepper as I am of any of my Bureau successes."

Prentiss studied him carefully. "So this isn't an undercover gig?"

"Assuredly not." His expression was neither proud nor pleased. "At least, not in any sort of official or organized capacity. Although the Joint Task Force people knew what was happening and were all set to fall into pounce position if necessary."

"I could use a little more explanation than that. People are dead here."

"Yes, Emily. People die every day, some good, some bad. But I neither planned nor initiated this mess. Much of the groundwork was already being laid when I moved here. As it happened I had something I could contribute.

"After far too many late night conversations with Chipsey, fueled by more margaritas than were good for either of us, I misrepresented myself and my political views to some of the locals. Once I had gone that far, it was easy for me to add misinformation to my – my profile, if you will. That's when I called upon a couple former connections to make Tad Bell seem like a name that I'd had all my life."

"So you're a confidential informant?"

"No, I'm not even a CI. I leave that to Bev McClintick."

"Who is he a CI for?"

"I don't know, Emily. He has mysterious late-night meetings, and I get the feeling that he's a CI, but we've never really discussed it. Amazing guy. Used to do insane, bat-shit crazy stuff for the CIA back in the day, when he was still practically a kid, and he still managed to all but re-write the book on nature photography. And he has contacts with, well, everybody. But getting back to your original question, the only official undercover activity I'm personally aware of is out of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms."

"I'm sorry," Emily said as gently as she could, "but a team of Cornsilk guys killed Daniel Hollister tonight and tried their best to take out McClintick, too."

"Oh, God," Bell/Gideon sighed, "I'm sorry to hear that. An outstanding guy, bright and ingenious and dedicated. The country is poorer tonight for losing him. Just another reason why I wanted to get away from this business. What kind of shape is Chipsey in?"

"Fair, as far as I know. Nothing that seems immediately life-threatening."

"I feel like a fool," Troy Jaworski said, "because there's all this official hoo-hah I should be saying. And I will say it. I really will. But the only thing I want to ask right now is–" and it seemed to take all of the starch out of her to say it, "–will you be staying here? I mean, here in – is everything–"

He reached across the table and covered one of her hands with his own. "This is my home, _droga._ This is who I am, and this is where I intend to live. And if the events of the day haven't changed your views about me–"

"No," she said, and it was almost a squeak. Her face was again dark pink. "Not at all."

He murmured something in Polish about a tiny and pretty young woman.

And Prentiss absorbed that and recalled Gideon's love of 1950s rock, and put it all together. "Little Bitty Pretty One," she blurted. "_LBPO_. On your barrette, I mean."

Still smiling at Jaworski, Bell said, "See that? I've lost my touch. I've become too obvious."

And Troy gazed across at him with the expression that is the international sign for _I'm too goofy in love to care_. On a scrawny, weathered, hardbitten cop on the wrong side of fifty, a cop who had seen pretty much the same range of horrors that the BAU saw, it should not have looked so natural, so warm – so flattering.

Prentiss cleared her throat and reached down as though it were really important to locate something in her go-bag, but the love bugs were evidently content with glances and didn't need her delicacy. Neither lunged across the table to plant a tonsil-sucker on the other.

After giving them a minute or so to set the air between them on fire, Prentiss made a little _let's-get-back-to-business_ noise.

"Mr. Bell," she said, and for the first time she meant it respectfully, and not tinged with sarcasm or irony, "I wish you had been able to let the rest of us know that Agent Hotchner was going to be all right. You were more than a little obscure at the restaurant. And _he_ sure didn't put us in the loop."

Tad Bell looked even less happy than he had at the news about Hollister. "God, I hate to do this, I know Hotch and I know his, his – I'm sure he told you that he was in the loop. He doesn't even like for people to worry about him retroactively, for Christ's sake.

"Truth is, he wasn't in on it until an hour or so before the conclusion. He had no idea, and, well, it was pretty difficult for him. I wish there had been an easier way for me to establish my ultimate bona fides with the Silkies – easier on the team, I mean. But suddenly this thing – they called it 'Operation Killing Floor' – built up momentum beyond anyone's expectations.

"You see, they were expecting to scoop up at least four, maybe all six of you. Wound up with two and lost one of them. Lost _you_, my impressive friend, still surprising us after all these years. And the result was that I had to be a whole lot harder on Aaron than I had ever dreamed I might have to be. And a couple of the Silkies that they assigned to work with me made the job a challenge all the way around."

"Opie." Emily could not put enough loathing into the name.

Bell sighed deeply. "Yes, he's quite a problem child, but his father still swings enormous weight with the Silkies. Whenever possible I paired him up with Danny, but there were some times that Danny just had to be elsewhere."

"_Silkies_?" Troy repeated. "They don't they really call themselves Silkies, do they? Like the _pantyhose_?"

"Or the festively feathered chicken," Bell confirmed. "Anyway, to be serious, I don't expect Aaron ever to forgive me for what I had to put him through. I think, though, that when he has a chance to get a little distance on this, he'll at least understand _why_ I did it. And I think he'll probably also agree that, given the situation, I did what had to be done. And that in my place, that he might have done the same. But as far as forgiveness goes," he sighed, "I'm not even sure that _I'll_ be able to forgive me."

There was so much that Prentiss wanted to say about that, and so much of it was informed by anger and heartache and even disgust, that she switched topics. "Which reminds me," she said, "about misplacing me. Who put up the roadblock?"

Bell rolled his eyes. "One of those spur-of-the-moment Chipsey ideas. He called the guys in the truck, warned them there was a roadblock and they should dump the _chica_. Promised he'd pick her up at the bottom of the hill and get her to where she was supposed to go. He thought–" Bell drew a deep and exasperated breath. "–He thought it would be _fun_."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

He sat on a gurney in a hallway full of sound and light and color and movement, wearing one of those embarrassing gowns and compensating for it by being swathed in sheets, his legs dangling. There was a weird snick-snick sound, shifting pressure on the side of his head. He thought that someone had told him what was going on and why it was happening. Maybe. There was too much activity. Too much to absorb, to remember. Too much to forget. Not to mention figuring out which was which.

A flash of movement to to his right. Instinctively, he tracked it, fight-or-flight kicking in.

"Aaron," a maternal voice said. Emergency room personnel come in three models: coach, top-kick, or mom. No doubt which model this one was. Firm fingers turned his head back to the left. "Keep your head still."

_Sure, OK. _

"It's busy here," he said. Or croaked.

Someone came around his head, looked at his face. Resumed her position. She had Care Bears on her scrub smock. The other one, the tall one with the olive complexion, the mom, had rainbows. "We had an incident tonight. An explosion. Lots of people to treat."

_Ohhh, right. I remember that. Hope one of them was Opie._

"Can you tell me your name?"

_They keep asking me that._

"Aaron Hotchner."

"Do you know what today's date is?"

_Don't lose your shit. They're just checking your basic brain function. It's their job._

"Wednesday. October 13th, 2010."

And do you know where you are?"

"Crowley County Mercy Hospital."

Someone else, a man with a clipboard, stopped beside him. "There will be someone in to get a blood sample in just a minute."

"OK." He stared at a metal plaque of fire emergency directions screwed to the wall across from his gurney. _Do not use stairs_, it commanded, over a cartoon of a man using stairs. No, wait. It said _Do no use elevators_.

_How could I have read that wrong?_

Trying to connect the dots, from exiting the SUV at the – what was their name? The Harwells. Mock orange bushes. Meadowsweet. Magnolia.

"One more," the person to his left said. "You're doing fine."

Snick-snick. "That's it, you're all done," Rainbow Smock said. "You come back in five days, and we'll take them out."

"Spirea," he said.

"What's that?"

"What Rossi calls meadowsweet. You can make aspirin out of it."

He had been thinking exactly that when the gun barrel had nudged him. And that Haley's family called it bridal-veil. The Brooks girls had shaken the blossom-laden branches over each other as children. Had emerged covered with white petals. There was meadowsweet behind Haley's and his first place, back by the fence. She was going to show him how to shake the blossoms, but they moved before spring arrived.

_Freeze_, the voice had said. It had been Danny's voice, he knew that now.

Danny and Opie.

_Some day, I will kill Opie._

"Agent Hotchner," a businesslike voice said. He turned and a tall, thin woman with a pixie cut –_ do they still call it a pixie cut? Haley and Jessica had, no, pay attention!_ – and a friendly smile. And creds. She was SSA Lily Sapienza, from the Bureau's Counter-Terrorism unit. He thought he had met her before.

"Hey, Hotch." Morgan was with her, carrying two folding chairs. "Is this a good time to talk?"

He waved vaguely at the interior hallway of the emergency room. "_Mi casa es su casa_." Wondered how many of the people lying moaning along the hallway in various states of injury were Cornsilk Brethren.

The medical personnel started to drift away.

"Slippers?" he prompted. The shorter one, Nurse Care Bear, gave him a thumbs up and assured him that she would be right back.

"Slippers?" Morgan asked.

"My feet are cold."

Morgan and Sapienza seated themselves. "Let me assure you, Agent Hotchner, that we'll have someone here on guard twenty-four/seven. And I know that you've been through an ordeal today, so we'll try to keep the questions to a minimum."

"I have questions, too."

"I'm sure you do, Agent Hotchner."

_If you think you're going to blow me off with that, you have seriously misjudged me, SSA Sapienza._

"How did Prentiss get out?" he asked Morgan.

"The people transporting her panicked and dumped her. We picked her up and she passed on your message." Morgan patted his knee. "Reid cracked it, which was probably just what you were expecting, and we took it from there."

"She's – in good condition?"

"Better than you are."

_Jesus, I sure hope so._

"She was down in the trench with us," Morgan said. "Remember any of that?"

_Trench. _

Opie had insisted on carrying him from the house to the trench. It was the one and only time he had been grateful to Opie. He had managed one step, one lousy step, before his knees buckled. And Opie had gathered him into his arms, held him like a child, and carried him out to the trench.

And he had known, truly known, that he would live. That he would not be buried alive. That Jason was still Jason. Because Opie was carrying him because he didn't want Danny to find out about the things he had done to Hotchner.

"Trench," he said weakly. "I think so. There was a tarpaulin."

"Hey, Aaron?" a new voice said. Bubbly, glowing girl with masses of blonde curls. Figure like Garcia, and a lot of the same intelligence in her eyes. Same general taste in fashion accessories. A puffy sticker of a smug Cheshire Cat on her name tag. "I'm Diane, and I'm here to take a little of your blood."

He extended his right arm. Looked down. She had little cutouts of characters from _Twilight_ and _True Blood_ on the handle of her little blood-gathering kit. A sheet of _True Blood_ logo stickers, upon which she had written in purple marker, _Stickers, get it?_ A postcard-sized photo of Bela Lugosi. A hand puppet of the Count, from _Sesame Street_.

He smiled.

If Garcia had gone into phlebotomy, she would have been a Diane.

She frowned at the heavy gauze encircling his wrists.

Jesus, God, he hated sympathy.

"I know," he said, trying for humor. "I look like a failed suicide."

She lifted his chin, looked him over both boldly and critically. "Nah, too stern," she said. "And grumpy. Grumpy people don't fail at suicide. Now that scratch line on your neck, _that's_ more interesting. That makes me think, _autoerotic asphyxiation_."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

"No," JJ Jareau said into her phone, lying flat on her bed with her shoes off. "Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism will be doing most of the media stuff. We'll have a pretty low profile on this, and that's just fine, because this is just a madhouse. The minute the rain stopped the air was full of choppers – news and DHS and Statie choppers, and even one or two from the Bureau.

"Let me give you an idea of how crazy it is here, sweetheart. Emily had to borrow this local cop's wife's sweat suit earlier today, and she was still wearing it when all this craziness went down. And she got just completely covered in mud and gunk, and she asked me to send her apologies to the cop's wife, say she would get it cleaned and if the mud didn't come out, she would replace it.

"And the cop's wife said, 'No, please don't wash it. It's been worn by one of the agents involved during the Gaineyville Road Massacre' – yes, the stupid media have already named it – 'and I can probably get better bucks for it as-is on eBay.' Right, that's exactly what I'm saying, Will. These people are nuts."

She rolled to her side and collected the TV remote and her note pad.

"The figure I have so far is nineteen dead," she said, "and I don't know whether that includes the EMT they shot or the two assassins that Reid took out." She did not add, _The ones who had been trying to take me out_. "No idea how many were wounded. No, the way they're describing it is, Cornsilk wanted to lure the Feds in, into the Gaineyville Road property. Then they were going to blow it up. But the bombs went off too soon, and in the wrong order. Right, one was supposed to bring everything crashing down at the end and put out the flames. But they went off in the wrong order and that's how the fire reached this buried tractor trailer where they stored their ammo – right."

She snapped on the TV and thumbed immediately through the 24-hour news stations. All offered the same general overhead view of the property. One of the networks in the crawler feed was calling the terrorists the Brothers of the Cornstalk.

She unfolded the coral colored sheet of twenty-pound paper and read its list of attractions again. "Wills, what I'd like for you to do is fly out here with Henry, I'll get a crib for the room, and we can spend time together when I'm not working. There's sort of a carnival here this weekend, and the organizers have assured me that the festival will go on. Although I imagine some locally provided stuff will cancel out because of death or injury in the family. Right, we can just do carnival stuff with little Cutie-Patootie when I'm not working.

"Oh, and call Jessica, will you? I haven't asked him yet, but I'll bet Hotch would just love to see Jack this weekend, too. I don't know what Jess's schedule is. If she can't come, can you manage two kids on the plane by your–" She began to giggle uncontrollably. "No, hon, tempting as that option might be, gags and straitjackets on children are frowned upon. Yes, even in America's heartland. I agree. Most unrealistic of them."

She lay back on the pillows again and smiled. "I love you too, Wills. And I'm really looking forward to curling up next to you and making the world go away. Can you put the Cute-Patoot on the line for a minute now?"

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

One of the most interesting aspects of Cornsilk, in terms of profiling, was the discovery of hundreds of hours of video blog online where various Silkies had contributed plans, philosophy, video, and post-action reports to the "Annals of the Brotherhood of Cornsilk." Or, depending on who uploaded them, the "Annuals," of the Brotherhood of Cornsilk. Or the "Annauls." And once, the "Anals."

_Talk about accuracy in labeling!_

So far, the Joint Task Force had been unwilling to share much of that documentation. As Rossi returned to what had been the BAU's conference room, the second in command among the Homeland Security folks, a tall, bland and balding bureaucrat, handed him a small flash drive on a key chain. "You might want to take a look at this," he said.

Rossi returned to his farthest-I-can-get-from-DHS corner and slid the flash drive into one of his USB ports. He hoped it would be merely narrative, but no such luck.

He flinched visibly at the strip-search of Emily, and at the way the camera lingered on the most invasive moments. Shook his head in admiration at her refusal to cower or shrink in shame; at her erect posture like a warrior woman of legend – gloriously beautiful in a way that transcended sexuality.

Then a different digital camera in a different location and with different settings, but lingering over the same vicious intimacies. Hotchner's response to their efforts to humiliate him had been to maintain an attitude of complete calm, body relaxed, as if this were just another part of his daily routine.

Dave could only guess at what the struggle to maintain their composure had cost the agents. He thanked God that the DHS had acquired the files before the Silkies could upload them to their V-log. Otherwise, he would have had to rip the Annals apart, one file at a time.

[Well, not so much, actually. All that would be required, he realized, would be to show the contents of those files to Penelope Garcia. If she saw them, she would tear the Internet apart, server by server, with the intensity of an avenging fury, until nothing remained of them. And during the entire process, she would be snarling, _the Internet is forever, my ass!_]

Another file, time-stamped almost three hours later, showed the two cuffed and blindfolded agents sitting just inches from each other. Prentiss's legs were in the position that Dave's politically incorrect Boy Scout leader had called "sitting like an Indian;" Hotchner's were stretched out in front of him casually, his ankles crossed. Both of them, oddly, leaned their heads back against the wall, chins jutting slightly forward.

They spoke softly and with remarkable poise, Hotch slowly and deliberately, and Emily, with just the right touch of heartache. They said their farewells: both of them facing imminent death, yet each more concerned with reassuring the other.

It could be an effective training film for Academy classes – a demonstration of ingenuity, courage, and grace under pressure – but Rossi didn't even want the rest of the team to see it. He certainly didn't want the world in general, even the world of federal agents, to see those moments.

Not much else of compelling interest was on the flash drive. Somebody had an impassioned rant about capitalism and mainline Christianity, heavily backed up by bogus statistics. There was what appeared to be a daily report on what they called "evangelism," meaning recruiting new Silkies. This evidently was not one of their big success areas.

Another file was a lecture on how the plastic explosive was to be deployed at the Sheldon house, presented by the Silkies' ex-SEAL, Farnham. He consistently referred to C-4 by its scientific name, cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, which he enunciated lovingly, deriving what seemed an almost erotic delight from every syllable.

[A few hours ago, Farnham had been blown up by his own cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, proof that there is a God and he has a_ huge_ streak of irony.]

This was followed by an interminable eight minutes of video that flatly contradicted Aaron's assertion that the only abuse he had been subjected to had been mind games. Rossi almost turned it off in two places, and when he reached the end of the file, he was pale and perspiring – and quivering with rage.

_No. You don't __do__ that to my people_, he thought at Opie Martin.

And at Aaron Hotchner, _If you lie to me again, so help me God, I'll smack you around __myself__._

He found himself regretting that Opie was a flatliner on life support, his body functions mechanically sustained only until his invalid dad could give permission for a shut-down. The only person who would be punished by Rossi's revenge would be the old man.

Rossi enjoyed a certain reputation as a loose cannon, a man with a casual attitude toward rules and regs. It was mostly a calculated front. He had a devilish smile that could make him seem a lot less predictable than he actually was. At his core, however, he recognized how critical many rules were to his team and every other team out there.

He was sorely tempted to destroy the files that documented abuse of these people whom he viewed as closer than blood relatives. In his eyes, the videos were just another violation of their humanity – but he ultimately unmounted the flash drive. He walked across the conference room and dropped it without comment on the desk of the DHS guy who had called his attention to it.

The DHS dude was such a frickin' hardass he had probably made a backup copy before he gave it to Rossi, anyway.

That was the downside of a reputation as a loose cannon.

As he set it down, two separate people began cursing. Apparently realizing the cornucopia of goodies their FTP sites had offered to prosecutors, Cornsilk had shut them down. Not just shut them down, but actually fed enough worms into the system that they had crashed the entire server.

_Gotta get Garcia on that. If she can't patch it up, nobody can._


	10. Two or Three in Furtherance of a Plan

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Ten**

**Two or Three Acting in Furtherance of a Plan**

The first official clandestine meeting of the BAU team – minus Garcia, who was up to her ears helping the Joint Task Force, and Hotchner, who had uncharacteristically agreed to be admitted into Crowley County Mercy overnight – was held shortly after six on Thursday morning at the Nightliner Motel, Room 107, the temporary quarters of Spencer Reid, who had unaccountably been assigned a room with two double beds.

Neither bed had been slept in – not that anyone had been doing a whole bunch of sleeping.

Rossi and JJ sat facing each other on the two beds. Emily (full of Tylenol and applying ice packs on her shoulder and knee, because the second day is always worse) and Morgan pulled over the chairs from the table so they formed sort of a square. Spencer Reid made it an irregular pentagon, straddling the desk chair and leaning his chin on his forearms.

On the same bed as Rossi, but closer to the foot, near the chairs, sat Thaddeus Bell, and he was getting a whole lot of strange looks from everyone but Rossi and Prentiss.

"The reason we're here," JJ began, "is to compare notes, to share our knowledge. And to do this without the task force listening in, not because they're the enemy, but because we may have some issues here. We all need to be on the same page. We don't have Garcia correlating everything for us, at least not for the moment. We can make fast phone calls, but we can't just conference her in. Which means it's just us.

"I've asked – Thaddeus – to join us because a lot of our questions are directed toward him. You do prefer to be called Thaddeus Bell, right?"

"It's my name, Agent Jareau, so yes. I changed it before I moved here, and long before any of this mess began to take shape. I've devoted a lot of time and effort to training myself not to respond to 'Jason.' I would appreciate it if you'd respect my choices and call me Tad."

"Just so you know, it's OK for you to call me JJ."

He nodded. "Thank you."

"Sorry to jump in first, Tad, but I have to know what's going on between you and Chief Jaworski," Emily Prentiss said.

Bell frowned, then said, "Ah, you mean, have I been using her? No. I met her when I came to town, talked to her at the restaurant. Then I got three more-or-less uninterrupted days to chat with her when she busted me."

"And since when do you smoke grass?" That came from a puzzled Reid.

"Since when I wanted to relax and loosen up a little, Spencer. Don't make me give my _marijuana is not a gateway drug_ speech. You've all heard it."

"And I disagree with it," Reid said quietly but audibly. His experiences with drugs and drug withdrawal had made him less tolerant and sympathetic toward their use, rather than more so.

"So we'll agree to disagree. Back to Troy, she's smart, she's enthusiastic. I found it marvelous when she bent my ear for a couple hours about profiling. I thought maybe she had recognized me, but the only book that has my picture in it is one of yours, Rossi, the one on arson. She has the paperback edition." To the other agents, he explained, "The hardback has a photo section, but the paperback doesn't."

"It's coming out in trade paperback format early next year," Rossi said, with the smooth professionalism of someone who has learned that in the arts, self-promotion is a critical survival skill, "and it'll have the photo section. Sorry, Jase – beg your pardon, _Tad_. I'll get used to that. Continue with Chief Jaworski."

"I thought that her interest in profiling was kind of cute and ironic, all things considered, but then I got to know her. Troy was happy to find someone to speak Polish with. It's easy to find Polish speakers in the Detroit area, and, well – not so easy here. And ... I don't know what happened. If I had kept a list of attributes I might want for a woman in my life, I doubt that she would have matched too many of them. But sometimes you wake up and you discover that you've been looking for all the wrong things. And then she kind of sneaked up on me," he added with a grin. "Grew on me. 'The Stealth Girlfriend.'"

Emily's eyes stayed narrowed. "So, she's not a convenience?"

His eyes crinkled. "Sweetheart, where did you ever get the idea that falling in love is _convenient_? No, don't answer that. If you'd ever been in love, you would know how damnably inconvenient it can be."

JJ felt herself snickering in agreement and had to control her features. And Will hadn't fared well on her list of things she had been looking for in a man, either, but shortly after she met him, she realized, _oh, so _that's_ what I want!_

_And God knows it can be pretty damned inconvenient._

"It's like that old, old song," Tad Bell continued, singing, "'She has eyes of blue, I never cared for eyes of blue, but she has eyes of blue, and that's my weakness now.' It gets dirty at the end," he added, far too cheerfully, "At least in the Betty Boop version – well, Helen Kane – the one I grew up listening to."

"Can we move on?" asked Morgan. "We have a lot of territory to cover. Where did the whole idea for this Operation Killing Floor thing come from?"

Bell worried his face and hair with his hands. "Oh, it's been an accident waiting to happen for years. Literally years. The Silkies have been playing Waco videos since the mid-nineties. It's practically the _Rocky Horror Picture Show_ to them by now. They know every line, every angle, every shot. Maybe pornography would be a better metaphor. They would sit there with their faces slack and their eyes glazed over and then, as the afterglow, if you will, what passes for pillow talk among paranoid wackos, they would talk about how awesome it would be to lure a few dozen feds into some building and then blow it up."

Bell looked from face to face. "So, right away, you can see the buttons that it pushed with me."

JJ bit her lip in sympathy. She still recalled the haunted Jason Gideon from six years ago, the man who had ordered his team into what was supposedly a vacant warehouse. It had turned out a deliberately set trap for the FBI. He had watched in helpless horror as the building went up, killing all six agents. He had never been the same. He had tried to keep it together on a field team again, leaning on Hotch when the stress built up, but it had lasted barely two years.

"But it's always Hotchner," she said, and she was horrified to realize that she had spoken aloud. Once she started, though, she saw no reason to stop. "He was the one who supported you when you came back. The one who covered for you and took the heat whenever you tried something funky and it didn't go off as planned. And here you are again, with another funky plan, and who got the heat? Hotch. And you put it on him yourself."

Bell bowed his head. "That was unfortunate."

"It was more than unfortunate, God damn it," JJ said, her mama-bear side finally slipping beyond her control. "If you have any friend in this room right now, any friend at all, it's me, and _I'm_ telling you that 'unfortunate' doesn't even come close. It was fucking inexcusable!"

"What you let your people do to Hotch was inexcusable and I for one don't care if you go to jail for it," Rossi said.

Bell caught his breath. "What I – what did my people do?"

"Oscar Pendleton Martin," Rossi said. "And one of his friends."

"My God." Bell looked stricken.

"His feet look terrible," Morgan said. "He tried to pull this shit about how his feet were cold, but I dropped my pen so I could bend over, and the soles were all swollen and purple and–"

"No, oh, good God, no," Bell moaned.

And Rossi said to Morgan, with interest, "His _feet_?"

And Morgan said, with surprise, "_Not_ his feet?"

"The only thing I did," Thaddeus Bell said, "was use a violet wand on him. The only thing. It looks worse than it is, it leaves no marks, and it does no damage if you do it right. Plus – well, shit, I knew that he's kind of schizzy about shocks. So it was a lot more dramatic than it might have been."

"I can't believe this," Rossi sighed. "You know better than that. Glass or metal?"

"Metal. I don't have a glass one. You have to understand that a big part of the success of the operation depended on my credibility. And my credibility had tanked, because – among other things – there were supposed to be two teams out there, and one of them would include the world famous profiler David Rossi, and there was only one team. And, obviously, no Rossi."

"Wait, so you're saying this is _my_ fault, for–"

"Of course not, Dave. Then the DEA swooped down on where the girls were being kept, from out of nowhere, and – I don't expect you to believe or understand or condone this, but I was in a spot where if I didn't prove, immediately and conclusively, that I hated feds in general and the FBI in particular, Aaron and I would both die. They would kill me as a mole, which I was, and then they were going to kill him anyway. Putting him through a little calculated stress saved both of us."

Rossi planted his elbows on his knees and looked away from Thaddeus Bell. "So if things had gone the way you hoped they would go, it would have been _me_ communing with you and your electric shocks, and Opie and his fists and his pliers–"

"Oh, Christ, stop, stop." Bell seemed close to tears. "Just stop, damn it, Dave. You want me in jail, you want me responsible, fine. I don't have a single argument that will hold up against it. Take me away. I won't put up a fight."

"Except that we have no proof, unless your guys videotaped you, too."

"Video?" An instant of confusion. "Oh, is that how you – of course they took video of me. It's almost like if they don't have video of it, it didn't happen. Damn cameras are going constantly. But I can give you something better. The Senior Center has a rear entrance, dates back to the days when it was some nondenominational church and the pastor lived right there in the building.

"Go in the back entrance. In the first room, in the far corner to your left, there's a broken file cabinet. Aaron's creds and gun and clothing and everything are there in the bottom drawer. My fingerprints should be all over them."

"Speaking of which, your guys do a nasty–" Rossi stopped abruptly. He stared intently at the floor, his hands clasped tight.

"A nasty what?" Bell asked.

Rossi shook his head. "Never mind." He said it too quickly.

Morgan, Jareau, and Reid exchanged confused glances.

"I get it," Emily said, her face and voice granite. "A nasty strip search. You saw video of them searching Hotch, didn't you?"

Rossi nodded wordlessly.

"And me, too."

"Yes," he whispered.

"And where is this video?" Emily's voice had a dangerous edge to it.

"Homeland Sick has it." Rossi tried to face her and found that he could not. "And the stuff that – that wasn't feet." He rubbed his eyes, rubbed his mouth. "The two of you, exchanging the code. Saying your good-byes. Fucking heartbreaking. I'm sorry, Prentiss. I wanted to destroy it – it was on a thumb drive – but–"

"Hell, if they showed it to you they already copied it," Prentiss snapped. "They're the fucking black hole that _we_ were supposed to be in the 60s and 70s. Everything goes in, nothing goes out." It was her turn to contemplate at the floor. "You know, after all this shit, it's only now that I feel like I've been raped." She glared at Thaddeus Bell. "And what was this for, man? Intermission feature at the Saturday Night Waco Follies?"

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Spencer Reid presented his credentials to the guard at the hospital entrance. He removed everything metallic from his pockets and handed over his revolver. He fed his messenger bag into the X-ray machine and stepped through the metal detector. Once cleared to pass Go, he collected his possessions and holstered his gun. The guard was experienced but it was obvious that the metal detector setup had been installed within the last few hours. People did double-takes when they saw it. Some – especially the very young and the very old – stood around for a few minutes watching visitors go through the procedure.

He was aware of some whispering, some interest in him. Some eyes fastened on him. He did not think that they were Cornsilk eyes, although that was always a possibility. More likely, it was the creds, the gun. He just didn't look like the average person's image of law enforcement. He smiled serenely at the assembled rubberneckers. It pleased him to be a symbol of the fact that it took all kinds to make a Bureau, too.

On his way to Aaron Hotchner's fourth-floor room, he passed the room where 68-year-old Robert Sheldon, owner of the ruins that had been the Gaineyville Road property, was handcuffed to his bed. He nodded at the guard, a Task Force guy he had met the previous night.

Tad Bell – Spencer was sure it would take him years to think of that man as anything but Jason Gideon, even with the foofy half-unbuttoned shirts, the tattooed eyeliner, and the earrings that looked like roach clips – Tad Bell had identified Robert Sheldon as the man Prentiss had nicknamed Smoky.

It was an apt name, too. Sheldon was only moderately injured, but he was in acute distress from being a three-pack-a-day man in a no-smoking facility. If he thought he could get away with it, Reid would have loved to drop in and visit Sheldon, lighting up and at least trying to puff away convincingly right there in front of him.

_Mess with my team, will you?_

Hotch was awake, headboard half-elevated, drinking apple juice from a half-pint wax container and ignoring a music video of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It was interesting that the explosions were at the top of the news all over the country, and Hotchner had his television turned to a channel with no news bulletins whatsoever. A folded newspaper on his tray bore silent evidence of his success at crossword puzzles and his failure with the daily Sudoku.

He smiled and waved vaguely at Spencer. "Good to see you," he said. "Did you get any sleep?"

"Sleep?" Reid echoed in his best cheesy-alien-movie voice, as he pulled a chair close to the bed. "What is this sleep your people speak of?"

"Right." He started to crush the wax container, winced, and pitched it into the trash unflattened. "Bring me up to date."

Reid took the time to collect some props from his messenger bag: a pen and legal pad, a small bag of mints, and two 20-ounce bottles of Cherry Coke. He needed these principally so that he could misdirect the attention of a friendly interview subject when he approached potentially sensitive areas of inquiry.

"Mm," Hotchner observed. (It was he, after all, who had taught Spencer the technique.) "Gonna be one of those."

"Could be." He unscrewed the cap of one soft drink and handed it to Hotch. "Sorry it isn't apple juice."

That earned a smile. "I'll live with it. Where do you want to start?"

"Let's start with what you've found out since last night."

"From the constant helicopters overhead, and from the fact that it's difficult to avoid news coverage of anything else, I get the idea that it's been a slow week for news and this is the most exciting item in town."

"Anything else?"

"Morgan and Sapienza from CTU were in, so I know that we stepped into the middle of an ongoing Task Force operation." A faint chuckle. "I was glad to learn about that. I'd been thinking that it was unnecessary force to blow up a building just to rescue me, and that Strauss would be having kittens."

Reid grinned back, delighted to see some sense of proportion in his superior. "That's right, Hotch, it's all about you."

"As it should be. And I know that Daniel Hollister was undercover from the BATF, and he's dead. And that Jason Gideon has changed his name to Thaddeus Bell. "

"Taddy-oose, not Thaddy-us," Reid corrected him. "He's fussy about it."

"Noted." In a dry tone that emphasized how unimpressed he was about Gideon's fussiness. "And there's a third man, Clinton, no, McClintick. He's up on five. I've been thinking about calling him later in the day." He contemplated for a moment. "That's all, except for a Morgan harangue about the way I express myself."

Apparently unimpressed by that, too.

"You know that it's a circus out there."

"It's a circus in here, too. There must have been a couple dozen casualties in the ER last night. Do you have any numbers on how many were ours and how many were theirs?"

"Overwhelmingly theirs across the board," Reid told him. "And numbers is a good place to start. The Brotherhood of the Cornsilk count 91 people among their members – that's not just from here, but from six or seven surrounding counties. There are four levels of member: Founder, Core, Provisional, and Seeker. You knew that already?"

"I knew the levels. I don't have recent numbers."

"There are twenty-three confirmed dead in the actions of last night. Nineteen were Silkies. One EMT, one DHS analyst, one FBI CTU negotiator, and Hollister on the side of the good guys. The analyst and the negotiator died when the ground under their vehicles blew up."

"Sapienza mentioned that." Hotchner was interested, engaged. Focused.

"Eighteen Silkies admitted to Mercy, full range of conditions." Reid pretended to look at his legal pad while he covertly watched Aaron's face. "Two of them are on life-support. They're pulling the plug on Opie Martin some time this afternoon."

Silence for a moment, then Hotch said icily, "I'm sorry he won't be awake to appreciate it fully."

_OK, anger. That's a healthy sign._

"We were under the impression that Tad Bell was the leader of Cornsilk, but he was only the leader of one particular action, Operation Killing Floor, the one that led to last night. Bell was a Provisional who was functioning as a Core – a brevet promotion was how he described it. How the Silkies describe it. If Killing Floor had been success, he would have earned Core status. That would have been huge, almost unheard of for someone who's been a member for only seven months."

A twitch of Hotchner's mouth. "Sorry it didn't work out for him." Reid could get no feel for whether the remark had been intended as humorous or nasty. Or both.

"According to their official records, they had six Founders, 45 Core, 26 Provisional, and 14 Seekers. We're still correlating records, hell, we're still identifying bodies, so it'll be a day or so until we have a better idea of what kind of admin structure they still have standing."

Hotch nodded.

"Prosecution of the injured, when they recover," Spencer said. "There should be no unsurmountable problems there. They've been obsessive about documenting who was doing what, and when. Someone apparently dismantled their FTP sites late last night. When Garcia gets back in – she was up most of the night – we'll see if she can do better than the DHS techies in undoing the damage. They may already have enough chunks of data to work with.

"–And victims," Reid continued without a pause, wanting to get this part over with. "We all know how critical it is in conspiracy trials to have victims for the jury to identify with."

Hotch nodded, sliding into a prosecutorial mindset.

_Deep breath, here we go ..._

"And our victims are Prentiss, and especially, you."

Already he was shaking his head.

"Hotch, there's no sense in denying it. They're obsessive about documentation."

"This is bullshit–"

Reid stood his ground. "No. Trying to fool us, and maybe yourself, into thinking that nothing happened – that's the bullshit. Don't waste your intelligence or the team's time with lies. It's on video. Every last miserable minute of it."

Aaron seemed to fold in on himself, his eyes closing, his body wilting a little to the side. It was as though Spencer's words had somehow impaled him. Remembering what Emily had said earlier that morning when she heard about the videos, about how she felt raped, and understanding perfectly what she was talking about, Reid said, "I'm sorry, Hotch."

"Jesus Christ," he said in a bleak whisper.

"I know," Reid said, looking at him steadily. He deliberately made himself remember what it had felt like to have his own abuse by Tobias Henkel's alternate personalities uploaded for everyone to see.

Hotch studied him for a minute, then leaned back and closed his eyes. "OK, we'll deal with that. No wonder Morgan was all over me last night insisting I had to be more forthcoming to the team about my condition, my experiences."

"Yes, sir. On a more cheerful note?"

"Cheerful. I could use some cheerful."

"JJ asked Will LaMontagne to fly in this afternoon with Henry – and he's bringing Jack, too. She hoped you wouldn't mind. The Task Force said we should expect to be here through Monday or Tuesday."

"Oh, God," Hotch whispered. "Sorry – that's – Reid, that's just great. I'm getting out of here somewhere around three or four this afternoon. Maybe can move that up, get th–"

Slowly, in a shocked whisper, "_Oh. Holy. Shit_."

Reid looked up, startled, and followed Hotchner's gaze.

Thaddeus Bell stood in the doorway.

He had changed his shirt, but was otherwise as he had been at the early morning meeting. His hands were empty. There would be no preposterous gestures like flowers or candy or Mylar balloons for this confrontation.

The air around them – these two men who were his principal father figures – was palpably charged with the tension of a thousand major issues. Spencer was seized by two conflicting and passionate needs: to hear what they had to say – what they could _possibly_ say – to each other under present circumstances; and to get as far away from this scene of potential raw pain and ugliness as he could.

"Mr. Bell and I will need time alone," Aaron said, his face a mask, his voice quiet and utterly neutral.

"Yes, sir." Reid stuffed his pen and pad into his bag, grabbed his soda bottle, and scrambled to provide them with privacy.


	11. Where's the Clown Show?

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Eleven**

**Where's the Clown Show?**

There was no such thing as a vacant park bench, so Rossi had marched into the hardware store and purchased a pair of generic woven plastic collapsible lawn chairs. This not only gave him (and anyone else he cared to talk to) a guaranteed place to sit. When combined with the most casual clothing he could scare up, it also gave him the look of a local, which was a distinct advantage if one was trying to avoid media identification as an FBI agent.

Now he passed a pleasant afternoon in jeans and a faded Cubs T-shirt. He sat on the far fringe of the uninspiringly-named Central Park, sipping one of those bitter convenience store coffees and watching huge, foul-mouthed men, many of whom looked like serial killers, transforming masses of grotesquely shaped metal into fairground rides.

"Gotta tell you," a familiar voice said behind him. He patted the folded chair beside him. Lily Sapienza, in capris and a hot pink crewneck sweater, shook it open and sat down. "Some guy carrying, oh, must have been fifty pounds of video equipment, walks up to Zeller and asks him, 'Where's the clown show gonna be?' And Zellie tells him, 'Carnival's this way, Homeland Security's that way.' I about died."

Rossi snickered – it was even funnier knowing that Zeller was himself with the DHS. Then he said, "I see you're dressed to fit in, too."

"It's easier to do my job if I don't have half a dozen reporters glued to me like barnacles everywhere I go." She stretched out her feet in front of her. "I guess neither of us ought to plan on being useful in any high speed foot chases today." She nudged her too-high ankle-straps against his plastic shower clogs.

"So," he said, nudging her back, "are you on a break, or on a mission?"

"Little of both. We just got ID on another two bodies. It's kind of a puzzle. Neither of them was from around here, and neither of them was with Cornsilk. Neither was a stranger to us, either. They were militia guys from North Carolina. Out of Phobos Rising."

"What?"

"Tell me about it, Rossi. It doesn't make sense. But there they were, wearing Brotherhood arm bands." Then, "That's the third time you've looked at your watch. Am I boring you?"

"No, not in the least, Lil. But I was kind of expecting Aaron Hotchner to call me for a ride. Maybe he hasn't been released yet? But – hospitals aren't like hotels, with a checkout time, are they?"

"No idea, sorry. Hey, everybody keeps telling me how scary he is. He seemed kind of sweet last night."

Rossi snorted. "Wait until he wants something from you. Did you hear why they decided to go on with the Fall Festival thing?"

"Yes, I did. Allegedly so the world will also get to see the quote, real, unquote, Crowley County. Which sounds wonderfully high-minded. But of course, they would still have to pay for all the amusements and stuff, and this way maybe they'll even skin some extra cash off the news media."

"You're far too cynical, Lil. No, don't get up. I told you, you're not boring me, and I can't believe that I've offended you."

Lily folded the chair. "Nah, I want to go see what they're doing over there, and then I need to get back. See you later, Dave."

He watched her walk – the heels and the tight capris made for a very interesting gait – over to where a large number of people of various ages and sizes appeared to be learning to dance.

His phone sounded and he snatched it up. Took a look at the faceplate and said, "Reid, what's up?"

"I just got off the phone with the hospital?" When he felt puzzled or insecure, Spencer's statements often sounded like questions. Rossi thought maybe it was less a genius thing than a younger generation thing. "And they said he was released at one-twenty, and he left with Thaddeus Bell?"

Another look at his watch.

_Sonuvabitch has been out for damn near three hours. And with Jason "Call Me Tad" Gideon. Would it kill him to call someone?_

"Do you think we should be worried?"

"Worried about whom, Reid?"

"I don't know. Right now, I think they both have motive to kill each other?"

Rossi rang off, picked up the chairs – the disadvantage to them – and wandered over to the group of people who were dancing. Lily had joined them. That was interesting to watch, too.

Had to be 50 people here, all of them following the direction of three leaders, who enthusiastically called out the step: _Rock-four pattern! Grapevine left! Scissors! Step hold for eight!_ A man in his fifties, a young girl in her teens or early twenties, another in maybe mid-thirties. None of them looked much like a dancer, but they certainly had style.

"OK," the man bawled in drill-sergeant tones, "Same pattern, start with your basic grapevine right, and this time, bring in the funky."

The woman in her mid-thirties called something to her mates, ran over to where people were piling their possessions, and grabbed a canvas bag. Hair and Isadora-Duncan-style scarf flying, she ran at Rossi.

He instinctively took a couple steps backwards, but she neither attacked him nor leaped into his arms. "Hi!" she said. "Agent – Agent–"

"Rossi?" he supplied.

"No, silly. That's you! No – Aaron. Agent Aaron ... something. He said you wouldn't mind if I asked you to autograph my books."

She hauled forth all five of his books, and a sixth, a book of fairly arcane essays on forensic issues that happened to include one he had written. _Nobody_ had that damn book. They didn't even have one on the open shelves at Quantico.

"I'll be happy to," he said, not sure whether to be complimented or to be warned that he had a potential stalker. He fished in his jeans pocket for his pen. "And what's your name?"

"Diane," she panted. "Sorry, all the dancing, and then the running – Diane, that's the usual spelling, one **N**, and I've been reading absolutely everything I can on profiling ever since _Silence of the Lambs_. And you're looking at my boobs."

He beamed. "And they're very nice boobs, too. I'm not ashamed to be caught admiring them." He began writing on the flyleaf of the first book. "How do you know Agent Hotchner?"

"Aaron? I'm a phlebotomist at Crowley Mercy. I made some dumb joke, you know, BAU, so I'm talking about autoerotic asphyxiation, and he said that you were here and I should talk to you about it. You had a lot more first hand experience with it. Well, he said it was more your scene than his, but I knew what he meant."

_Yeah, I'll just bet._

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

"It's like getting back on a goddamn horse," Emily explained to Morgan as she forced herself to put on her mocha Ultrasuede jacket, the one the Silkies had made her remove. "And anyway, it's only warm in the sunlight. The shadows are cool."

And, man, was it good to have her creds, her bag, her gun, and her good boots back. She felt more like a whole person. Task Force personnel were now swarming over the house where she and Hotchner had been held, sucking up forensic evidence. In her case, it wouldn't matter. She knew who her captors had been: Bob Sheldon, now deep into the throes of nicotine withdrawal, and some insurance salesman named Keene from Springfield County. Keene had been the man she had called "Boston." He now resided in a drawer in the Crowley County morgue. In three pieces.

_Tsk-effiing-tsk_.

She could best sum up her condition with _my everything hurts_, but she wasn't about to let that take control of her life, either. Nevertheless, when Derek offered his arm, she took it happily, especially since they still had no idea what kind of retaliation the Silkies were planning, if any. And, of course, it was also nice to be seen with a stone fox of an escort. The guy turned heads wherever he went. She suspected that part of his secret was wearing shirts that were almost the same tone as his skin, giving a momentary impression that he was bare to the waist. That was always good for an instant of thinking, _Yum_!

They stopped in the park to watch the Festival setup and to watch a large group of people doing some weird line-dance thing.

"_Tai chi_ just hasn't made it out here yet, huh?" she asked Morgan.

"Guess not. The tall one with black hair in the back, capris and pink top, that's Sapienza from CTU."

Prentiss watched her for a moment. She had the kind of moves that could make the chicken dance look like an erotic video. Plain face, solemn, typical hard _seen-too-much_ Bureau face, and not enough meat on her, but great moves. "She's nuts to wear those heels on uneven ground. Morgan, how bad does my face look?"

He turned her so she faced the sun. "I've seen you better, Prentiss, but I've seen you worse, too."

"That's not what I meant. I mean, do I look like a victim?"

He knit his brows. "I don't know what to say. You look like something happened, but nothing about you makes it clear what happened. You look good, though. It isn't that noticeable from maybe twenty feet away. In the shadows, it doesn't show at all."

"I tried putting foundation on it and it just looked like I was trying to cover something."

"Well? You were."

"Hmmf." She turned her head and almost squealed. "Oh my God, Derek, look! A Scrambler! Will you ride it with me tomorrow?"

The normally fearless Morgan, the man most likely to run toward whatever and whoever everyone else was running away from, looked at the silver and white monstrosity with its cheerful red trim and said, "I dunno, Princess. I don't really do that round-and-round shit.

"Hey!" he added in a loud, enthusiastic voice. "Look who's here!"

On the stoop at the side entrance to the police station was Jack Hotchner, wearing sunglasses and holding a walkie-talkie in his hands. They walked over to him. He looked up and smiled. Emily sat down beside him. Derek leaned his shoulder against the wall and squinted into the west.

"Hey," she said to Jack.

"Shh," he said, focused on what he was doing. He pressed the _Send_ button and spoke. "Say again?"

"Is it all clear there now, Deputy Jack?" Troy Jaworski's voice asked. "Over."

Jack peered up and down the street. Looked at Derek. Looked at Emily. Pressed _Send_. "Yes ma'am, Chief Troy. All clear here. Except for a 'spicious man and a 'spicious lady." He grinned, _oh, God, his father's grin_, at Derek and Emily. "Over."

"Copy that, Deputy Jack. We've been told to be on the lookout for a man in a black hat and riding a big black horse. Over."

"Copy that." Jack looked around again. "No horses in sight, ma'am. Is the man a bad guy? Over."

Prentiss presumed that Chief Jaworski must have taught the boy the local transmission protocol, since it wasn't like the FBI's.

"Deputy Jack, that's a negative. We don't know yet whether it's a good guy or a bad guy. That's why we gave you this assignment. You're our top man for the job. Over."

"Hey, Jack," Emily started, but Jack shushed her again.

"I'm on duty," he explained.

Derek grinned at her and suppressed a chuckle. "Can't tell whose child he is, can you?"

It felt good just to sit in the shade and watch life go by. Derek strolled across the street and checked out the carpentry on someone's wheelchair ramp. He engaged briefly in conversation with a pretty and familiar girl, who then turned and waved at Emily.

_Got it. Yasmin from the Belle Pepper. Small towns. Everybody knows everybody._

After a few minutes, Jack's eyes went huge at the approaching sound of hooves on pavement. He backed up and looked both ways, then stabbed the _Send_ button. "Miss Chief Troy," he gasped, "there's a man on a big black horse riding right down the street." His eyes grew still bigger. "It's my daddy!"

He dropped the walkie-talkie with a clunk, ran several feet, then doubled back and picked up the radio. Hit _Send_. "Oops, sorry," he said. "Over and out."

"Copy," Jaworski replied with a laugh.

And his daddy was exactly who it was, looking very un-cowboy – and not particularly FBI – in jeans, a bright blue knit shirt, a black Yankees cap, and shades. His wrists were wrapped in gauze and his pale face made the assorted injuries to his face stand out, but he looked profoundly contented.

He asked Morgan to give Jack a lift up, and he did so. Wide-eyed, Jack patted the horse's glossy black neck. Then he half-turned.

"What's the matter with your face?" he asked his father.

"I'm just f–" Hotchner caught the glare Derek shot him.

Emily could actually see him gathering his courage. Weird, she thought, that showing weakness to his son was more frightening to him than facing death. _And sad_.

"I had some bad stuff happen to me," he said, "but I'm getting better and I'll be all right. I promise."

The son of Aaron Hotchner was not about to let an interview subject get away with that kind of crappy half-answer. "Did somebody hurt you?"

"Yes."

"The bad guys." It wasn't a question.

He visibly braced himself. "Yes." Did he really believe that his boy might reject him for his weakness?

_Aaron, who in your past rejected you for being a human being?_

Instead, Jack turned around completely and flung his arms around his father's upper body. "I can take care of you," he assured him. "We can do this together."

Hotch swallowed hard. In a hushed voice, he asked, "Is that what your mommy said?"

"She _always_ says." All these months, and Haley still frequently lived in Jack's present tense. "We always can do it together."

He wrapped his arms around his son and buried his face in the boy's hair, drinking in his scent hungrily, devouring his presence as though he were a drug – and maybe Jack was a drug, in the best sense of the word: someone who alleviated his pain and promoted healing.

After a long embrace, his eyes glistening, he nudged his son around and settled him down into front position on the saddle. He said, "You good?"

"I'm good."

"This horse's name is Adelaide. Can you tell her giddy-up?"

Jack bounced in the saddle. "Giddy-up, Anna-lade!"

Aaron's knees nudged the mare's sides, and the Hotchner boys were off, trotting into the brilliant late afternoon sunshine. A freshet of wind sent bright leaves swirling around Adelaide's hooves.

Almost before Emily could think it, Morgan said, "What a picture."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Henry was asleep in the crib, and Will gazed, hollow-eyed and fried, at JJ. "Why couldn't he have slept on the plane?" he whispered. "Between his fussing and Jack's constant – _constant_ – questions, I was ready to wiggle out the window and ride on the wing. And the fussing was all right. It just needed a lot of attention and juice boxes and rocking.

But half of me was thinking, how the hell does Aaron _manage_ such a little question machine, and then, well, he gets it from his dad, and then an even snarkier part said, _Well, he's never home, is he? And why do you think that is?_ And I know it was unfair, so don't jump on me, 'kay? But then there was this other part of me that recalled my mom's stories about me and my sisters. Henry will be why-ing us to tears within a couple years."

"Yes," JJ said serenely. "Development is a bitch. But he'll pass through that phase, and he'll eventually get to his teens, where we are the most absolutely, totally embarrassing adults in the whole world, and the college years where we're reduced to two functions: laundry and cash machine. Then his JJ phase where he can't pass a table without straightening out stuff on it. And then his Will phase, where he leaves the seat up and yawns like a grampus–"

"Enough, honey, I'm guilty," he said, laughing. "Now, you wanted to talk about something, didn't you?"

"It's OK, we can wait."

"No, really." He sat heavily on the bed and pulled her down into his lap. It was a romantic gesture, but the man had no idea how bony his knees were. "Talk to me, valentine. You can even ask me questions, as long as they have nothing to do with aeronautics, giraffes, cartoon characters, or anything that starts with 'Why.'"

She planted a kiss on his nose. "I've had it with the BAU and I've had it with Metro DC life. I want to find a job somewhere in a small town, a lower-stress job with rational hours and the chance to know my neighbors."

The shocked look she had anticipated never materialized. "Sold," he said. "Let's house hunt first, job search later."

"Isn't it better to–"

He nuzzled her gently. "Don't believe so, cherie. Let's find the perfect house and people. The job will take care of itself."

Her phone buzzed. She peeked at it. "It's Morgan," she said.

"Jareau," she said into the phone.

"Jayj, there's this guy, Emmett Lloyd Merriejohn, he's the grand-high-something-or-other of the Silkies. He's having a major press conference in St. Louis in about three hours – at seven PM. He's booked on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC over the next few hours, and you know these guys – they're like a bunch of bugs under a freakin' rock. They do not do publicity. They do not have official statements and take questions from the media. They don't do the circuit of talk shows."

"How sure are we that he's the real deal?"

"He is or he's suicidal. You don't pretend to be a Silkie if you want a long and happy life," Derek said.

"Which is why we're particularly concerned with our pretend Silkies, Bell and McClintick. Reid and Rossi think there will be some historical revision that could paint big bullseyes on Bell and McClintick, possibly Prentiss and Hotch, too.

"And then there's the mess with these Phobos Rising people. Five of them so far. We need to be ready to jump in any direction. Garcia's sending you everything we have on him. We don't have a response yet, but when we do, your analysis of what this guy said and how he said it will be a big part of it."

"I'll get started now."

"You're a peach, JJ."

She hung up.

"I know," Will said. "Duty calls. But tomorrow morning, we're going to start house hunting."

Shocked, she gasped, "Here? Now? Why?"

"No reason. To get our house-hunting feet wet. That way, when we start looking in earnest we'll already have something to compare them to. And you can show me all around, and people at the circus will treat us extra nice because they'll want us to move in–"

"It's a fall festival, not a circus." She kissed his forehead. Licked his eyelid. Nibbled delicately on his eyebrow. Sweet promises of things to come. "But, yeah. Getting into that small-town mindset again will be nice."

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

Penelope Garcia was starting to get acclimated to the rhythms of the Task Force. It was just a matter of figuring out whose hysteria was real, and whose could be soothed and ignored.

It was obvious from how smoothly they worked with their opposite numbers in the other agency that this work group had been around for a while. When she dug around in the system trying to learn how long the two agencies had been working on this, she found herself up against well-developed firewalls and security protocols that would daunt a lesser hand.

For Garcia, it would just take a few extra minutes here and there.

_And what are your secrets, my little friends?_

But for the moment, she was engaged in something else: building a life history of Emmett Merriejohn, age 61, a man who seemed as reclusive as he was angry. Wasn't hard to tell what was in his tank. He was fueled by outrage.

_Reclusive and giving a full evening's worth of press appearances? Bizarre._

"Sweet Pea?"

She swiveled in her chair to face her friend and partner, standing in her doorway with a deeply troubled expression on his face. "'Sup, 'sup, Love Pup?"

He shook his head. "I dunno. Maybe something, maybe nothing."

"I thought you were done at four today."

He nodded. "Was. Figured I'd stick around for a bit, see what kind of hours you needed to get into. That was only half an hour ago. OK, forty-fifty minutes. Then I got – concerned."

"You're being mysterious. I don't like it when you're mysterious, Love Puppy."

He pulled up a chair beside her and set a five-by-eight file card – purple, her favorite color – in front of her.

She studied the strings of numbers. "Two things, Puppy. First, the obvious point that these are files off the Bureau's dedicated server over at Hoover." She fiddled with her hair, tapped her feet, gnawed on the top of her pen.

"Right."

"Second, Kev, I told you to kill off that Cornsilk server."

"I did, Sweet Pea. I killed it dead."

"Did you, like, save some of the files, after I specifically told you not to, that they were never to see the light of day?"

Stubborn mule expression. "Yes, I did. Nobody will ever find it, but I copied the whole thing into a place where the Bureau can get hold of it if they need it for prosecuting the Cornsilk people."

"Damn it. Kevin, you promised me–"

"Look at that file."

She tapped in the address and frowned. No access. Tried two workarounds, got it on the third. Frowned even deeper. "Why does this look familiar? That double, then triple, then–"

"Looked like fishpink to me," he said, referring to another cracker from Garcia's shady-side-of-the-law days.

Garcia played around with the security system for another minute. "That's who it is. It's fishpink. You ever run across her?"

"Her work, yes. Not her."

Garcia rolled her eyes. "Real full of herself. Good, but not that good. Her first name is Sharlah. Or was. She's probably changed it by now. Probably calling herself something real improbable. Like Eminem. Or Sarah Palin. Or Kurt Vonnegut. Or Erin Strauss."

Kevin didn't even crack a smile."Look again at the paths."

Her eyes darted back and forth across the lines of Kevin's meticulous printing.

Her heart began to thud. "And this goes back how far?"

"Four months."

"This – this just boggles my mind, Kev. Sharlah is, to start off with, female. Jewish. Lesbian. Feminist. Card-carrying ACLU. She dabbles in Wicca and Paganism. I know all these things about her, and I know them to be true."

"And it's supposedly an uncrackable system."

"Which only means," Garcia reminded him, "that nobody has cracked it yet. That we know about."

"I know," Kevin sighed. "And I believe you on fishpink. But as far as I can tell, for the past four months, fishpink has been helping Cornsilk to maintain a mirror site on the _Bureau's own_ highest security, never cracked yet, server."

Garcia looked glumly back and forth between lines of code. "To which all I can say, darling Love Pup, is, what the_ fuck_?"


	12. Hollywood's Impression of a Profiler

**A/N 1 – Would these be easier to read if the chapters were shorter? I can break them up and repost if y'all think it's a good idea. As a measure, I've made this about half my usual length.**

**A/N 2 – Warning of drug use in this chapter. Not sure why I'm warning, when we don't warn for torture, murder, drunkenness and casual sex, but some people are funny about that, so, warning: Tad Bell does doobies.**

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Twelve**

**Hollywood's Impression of a Profiler**

Spencer Reid, a man with his remote, sprawled in his underwear on the bed further from the door, flipping through channels and thinking about calling out for pizza. He wished that he had a bottle of something, although he wasn't much of a drinker. He thought maybe he could make a decent drinking game out of the coverage of the Gaineyville Road mess. Extra points every time the camera panned from the courthouse to the carnival rides being set up and some brainless news correspondent intoned something like, "But for this small town, life goes on. There are still small things to celebrate."

The immediate story came out of an in-state newsroom, so their solemn live-coverage closing was somewhat spoiled by a local booster poking her head into the shot and chirping, "And don't forget to send in your song requests for the bands and the karaoke. We need them by midnight tonight! Phone 'em, fax 'em, email 'em, text 'em – we aim to please!"

He wished he could recall one of those obscure ballads in various Renaissance languages his mother was supposed to have sung to him when he was an infant. It would be fun to request one for karaoke. Of course then some nitpicker would actually expect him to get up there and belt out some – yuck.

Nope, bad idea all around, even if he sang well, which he did not. For someone with close to perfect pitch, he had surprising problems reproducing melodies, and his sense of rhythm was, well, hit and miss at best.

_A sound._

He sat up so fast he dropped the remote.

Someone had turned the key in the door to the next room over, that assigned to Aaron Hotchner – who hadn't even had a chance to enter it yet.

All his senses kicked into high alert. He slipped his revolver out of its holster on the bedside table, checked the cylinder, and turned off the lights.

He tiptoed to the window and peered out of the edge of the insulated drapes.

A gas-guzzling midnight blue Town Car with tinted windows, motor running, sat perpendicular to the cars in the lot, blocking off three of them from backing out, should they desire to do so. A familiar figure – in spite of the hair and earring and leather jacket and pants – walked from Aaron's room to the car. Reached in and popped the trunk. Extracted a wheelchair from its depths. Walked it around to the passenger side of the Lincoln.

He bent. Aaron Hotchner, in jeans and a knit shirt, wrapped his right arm around Bell's shoulders and allowed the man to help him transfer himself from the auto to the wheelchair. The two men looked neither friendly nor hostile. They could have been mere acquaintances. Tad Bell opened the back door and Jack Hotchner emerged. Bell piled the boy's luggage on Hotchner's lap and pushed him toward the room.

Underwear or not, Reid threw his door open. "Hey!" he called out.

"Can't stay," the so-called Tad Bell said, tipping the chair backward slightly to get it over the small metal bump in the threshold. "Blocking traffic, and this place is bursting at the seams and getting worse. Good seeing you, Doctor Reid." He sketched a casual wave at Reid, at Hotch. A warmer, smaller one at Jack.

Climbed into his car, shifted into gear and drove off.

_Sonuvabitching piece of shit. ..._

Reid stalked the few feet that separated their doorways and entered Hotch's room right behind Jack.

"Dr. Reid," the boy said. "You got no clothes on. And you got your gun!"

He glanced down at his plain blue tee, his blue boxers decorated in drums, bugles, and flutes. His usual interesting choices in socks. Accessories by Smith and Wesson. _Crap._ "I was surprised," he told the boy. "We've all been worried about your dad. He didn't tell us he was leaving the hospital."

Hotch himself, slowly and carefully transferring himself out of the chair to sit on the edge of the bed, looked startled. "The guards absolutely assured us that they would pass the word along."

"They did," Reid said solemnly. "They called Homeland Security. Only Homeland Security. And DHS didn't call us."

"Jeez, I'm sorry," Hotch said. "Doctor Jack, do you have that bag from the hospital? Thank you." He removed three bottles of prescription medicine from it and set them on the bedside table. "And do you see those plastic drinking glasses over there? Can you get me a glass of water?"

"Sure, Daddy." The boy hurried to carry out the task. "I'm helping my daddy," he told Reid. "Some bad guys hurt him. We're going to get him better together." The boy trotted off to the bathroom.

Reid looked at Hotchner. "How long will you be in the wheelchair?"

"Just a couple days. Then a few on crutches – I could use some coaching from an expert on that – and then I should be OK walking."

"Do you want your shoes off?"

Aaron sighed. "Oh, dear Christ, yes."

Reid handed Hotch his pistol, bent over, untied and removed Hotchner's running shoes. "Feet up on the bed?"

"I can–"

"No bullshit, Hotch."

"Yes, please," he said meekly.

Reid lifted his legs and helped him turn around and get comfortable. "Your little Lone Ranger routine this afternoon can't have helped you." He held his hand out for his handgun. "Thank you."

"It may not have helped, but don't think it hurt, either. It was important to me that Jack's first sight of me wasn't in the chair. And I enjoy riding, haven't done it in years, so, on balance, I'd say it was a good decision."

"One of Bell's horses."

Hotch nodded, an ironic grin on his face. "Yes. Imagine Gideon with a stable. Sorry, _Tad_. That'll take some getting used to."

Reid dropped into one of the chairs by the window. "I confess I'm really interested in finding out how the conversation went between the two of you."

A pause. "You mean, talking about what's happened since we got here?"

"Well, yes. I think it's a reasonable inquiry."

Hotch accepted the glass of water from his son, who climbed into the bed on the other side of his father. Aaron handed him the remote, ruffled his hair, and kissed him. "Thanks, Doc," he said.

"Welcome." Jack snapped the TV on and began surfing through channels. Guy stuff starts early.

Looking again at Spencer, Hotch said, "I hate to disappoint you, but that conversation hasn't taken place yet. It will, and I have no idea how it'll shake out. But for now, we've reached an understanding that, **A**, he can't in good conscience apologize for what he did, but it's a moot point, because, **B**, I don't think I can see my way clear to forgiving him. So we've just been working the profile.

"Just FYI, Reid, the door is still open and I'm sure we'll have company soon. Perhaps you could try for a more professional look? And holster the piece?"

_Oops._

"I shall return," he said, and scurried back to his room.

Ɏ Ɏ Ɏ

**Testimony by T M Bell **

**to SSA E J Wainwright, CTU**

**13 October 2010**

_Affiant Thaddeus Marcus Bell states that during the late evening-early morning hours of June 7-8, 2010, he sat on the back deck of his house at 7206 Sheridan Road with two acquaintances, Glenn Jefferson Harwell (Carla Harwell's uncle) and Jacob Arthur O'Neal. _

_Bell at this time had been a Seeker within the Silkies for 2 months and 6 days. Harwell and O'Neal were both Provisionals, of 2 year, 8 month, and 3 year, 5 month seniority, respectively..._

~ ooo ~

They sat on his back deck watching scattered thin clouds slide in and hide the stars, then slip away, revealing them again. They had been indulging in most of a case of beer and some pretty good weed, and the movement of the clouds seemed to be symbolic of something. Nobody seemed to know quite what, but they figured it had to be pretty deep.

They had slid into the sweet spot between the giggles and the stoned munchies, that spot where a soul could grasp cosmic truths. Or truths, anyway. They could have been cosmic.

Glenn and Jake were cluing their baby Brother in to some of the hopes and dreams the Silkies harbored. Tad, sitting on the deck with his legs drawn up and his arms around them, thought these dreams over. "But how are you going to get the feds to rush the building? Didn't Waco teach them anything?" He lifted the lid of the cooler and popped the top from another beer.

"Well, that's that problem we're working on now," Glenn told him, burped, and giggled. "Maybe if we held some strippers hostage–"

"No," Tad said thoughtfully. "Just be a waste of perfectly good strippers."

All of them thought that was pretty damn funny.

"You got any Doritos?" Jake asked.

"You got any more joints?" asked Glenn.

"Yes and yes," Tad replied. "And, come to think, I got the answer to your little problem, too. Chips are in the first cupboard as you go in, on the left, up top. Pass me that box and I'll roll us a couple more." He leaned around to point out the box in question and toppled over flat on his back, where he lay and laughed until his sides ached and he had to pee.

"Be right back," he assured Jake. He rose to his feet and tottered into the house to avail himself of the can, idly singing what few words he could remember from some Petula Clark hit of long ago. When he returned through the kitchen, Jake was squinting at the label on a can of black beans.

"You think if we opened this up and mashed 'em with a fork, it'd make bean dip?" he asked.

"Nah. Wrong kind of beans." He paused and processed that information. "Actually, it might be OK with a little hot sauce and some onions," he corrected himself.

"Fly's open, Taddy-OOSE," was Jake's response.

"Ooh. Sorry." Bell adjusted himself and continued his trek back to the deck with the slow and hyper-careful gait of those deeply impaired by substance abuse. His song had switched to something that was completely composed of the words "Rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby." Or maybe that was just all he could remember of them. He essayed a little dance step, bumped into the counter, giggled, and boogied on back out to where Glenn had successfully crawled all the way over to the stash box.

"Here," Glenn said, thrusting the little cloisonné box at his host. "Roll us a couple. And while you're doing that, 'splain what we should use for bait."

Tad frowned. "Bait for what?"

"For Feds."

"Oh." He concentrated on sprinkling the grass on the paper and rolled the first doobie.

"Man," Glenn said. "You sure can roll 'em stoned." His inadvertent play on words hit him a little behind the curve, maybe fifteen seconds late, but he gave a great barking laugh. "Rolling stoned." he cackled. "Rolling stoned!"

Wearing a maniacal grin that made even his dope-and-liquor-anesthetized face hurt, Tad Bell prepared three joints, dusted all the leftovers back into their little envelope, and slid the box across the deck to the general vicinity of where it belonged.

"This ain't a scene," he warbled uncertainly. "It's a goddamn arms race ..."

"The Feds?" Glenn prompted.

"Oh. Right. That one's easy. Other Feds."

"Yeah, easy, right," Glenn said with undisguised disgust.

"No, no," Bell said. "Not those assholes. The other assholes. The ooky-spooky profiling guys, serial killer chasers, like in _Silence of the Lambs_. Troy talks about 'em – intesh – intellectuals, not fighters. Can't shoot for shit, either, I hear."

"With Hannibal the Cannibal?" Jake asked, teetering back out to join them with a bowl of undrained black beans mashed and stirred up with what smelled like french onion dip. "That chick, she's damn hot for a rug-muncher." He farted as he lowered himself into a deck chair. "She shot pretty good, too."

"That's fucking movies," Bell said, airily dismissive. "Fucking TV. Fucking _Hollywood_ FBI. Fucking _actors._ Back in New York, I knew a guy who knew a guy who was in the, ah, that profiler thing. Said his buddies gave him a wet paper bag, bet him he couldn't shoot his way out of it."

There was a brief pause for hilarity.

Glenn was the first to find his way back on track. "So we take a bunch of _Silence of the Lambs_ guys prisoner, make them the bait for a big honkin' army of other Feds?"

Tad accepted the lit joint back from Jake. "That would be the plan, Stan." He took a long toke, held his breath forever, exhaled, and veered off into bits and pieces of some Paul Simon song.

"But if they're such feebs – haw, haw, Feeb feebs! – then why would the Fed army give a shit about saving them?"

"Because they're _stars_, Jakie my man," Tad slurred. "Another beer here, if ya please, Glenn. People make movies about them. Make crappy TV shows about them. They write books, get famous. Ask the average asshole on the street if he can name any FBI guys, ninety percent them, only names they know are these guys who write the books. Troy and whozit, aw, you know, the fat chick from the hospital, they talk about 'em like they're celebrities."

"OK," Jake said, his voice stoned but serious, "how do we get the Hannibal guys here? And how do we know for sure they'll have one of the big shots with 'em?"

"Oh, God," Tad groaned. "I have reached my limit, gentlemen. Starting to fade and I can't think for shit anymore. Let me puzzle on that a little and get back to you, OK?"

"You serious?"

"Damn straight. Besides, always gets Troy hot when she talks about 'em."

Jake leered. "She any good?"

Bell shook his head. "Not telling. Little chiefie woman is armed and dangerous. Lorena Bobitt got nothing on a pissed-off Troy Jaworski."


	13. Scary Spice

Usual disclaimers, blah, characters and their personalities are property of CBS and the producers of Criminal Minds, blah. Only the plot is mine.

A/N This chapter wanted to go on forever, and it took me days to stomp the darn thing into submission. Again, going with 3,000 wds as maybe easier to read.

**Scrambling for Altitude**

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Scary Spice**

"You want me to close the door?" Jack asked him.

That day, Aaron had his choice of only two states, drugged goofy or pole-axed by pain. At the moment he was rising out of misery and into an analgesic haze. Everything seemed to require ten times as much thought for him to reach a conclusion. He had been floating comfortably dead-center, but he figured he was about ready for another hit of Vicodin.

He thought about the door. He pictured his son answering the door, being between him and some Cornsilk thug. With the door open, he would at least see who was entering. He could shield Jack with his own body if necessary.

_My son, who has these amazing depths I never suspected. And I watch him all the time when I'm home. How did I miss this?_

Two hours earlier, he had sat in an armchair at Tad Bell's, his feet propped on an ottoman, as Jack's little fingers explored his face. _What made these marks?_ he had asked. Hotch mumbled something awkward and self-conscious about a piece of cloth around his head. _Oh_, Jack had said. _A gag_. _He didn't want you to yell for help. Or talk to him. _

Then he touched some of the other marks on his father's face. Some bruises. A couple small cuts. _He hit you here and here, and here. And here. _

Jack had frowned and moved his hands a little, almost experimentally. Then he had observed,_ He hit you with his right hand. _

Hotch had nodded, overwhelmed.

And Jack had pursed his lips_. Was it one man, or a bunch of men?_

"A bunch," he had managed to whisper.

And then Jack had said them, those stunning words: _Don't feel bad about it, Daddy. All the superheroes get captured sometimes. But they 'scape. Just like you. They always win in the end. That's the important part._

The child's wisdom, his solemnity – the unsettling role-reversal – all of these things had left Hotchner speechless, breathless. Humbled. In awe that this child could be his own.

_I knew he was a bright kid. I would expect nothing less from Haley's and (let's be honest here) my child. But I never expected him to be so focused, so analytical. Just turned five, and he's a natural profiler._

"The door?" Jack prompted, bringing him back to the present. "Do you want me to close it?"

"I don't think so," he replied. "Dr. Reid will be back in a minute, and I think other friends will come by, too."

He had barely spoken the words when David Rossi peeked in and tapped on the door frame. "Busy?" He had a large paper bag in his arms. He gave Aaron a careful visual once-over from where he stood. Both concern and pity shone in his eyes.

And Hotch hated both of them. This was going to be tough.

"Come in, Dave."

Rossi hefted the bag. "Your recovered clothes and property. A receipt form from CTU for you to sign. How about I give you the form, and I'll empty the bag out for you."

"That works."

Carefully, elaborately not looking at him, Rossi handed him his own notebook and pen, followed by a multi-page receipt form filled out as only a cautious (hell, _paranoid_) bureaucracy can.

[Example: _One small plastic container, approx 1 in x 1½ in, with white tab opening at top, labeled "Tic Tacs, Wintergreen," and containing 17 small green capsule-shaped objects._

This covered the CTU's butts in case someone had slipped a cyanide capsule in among the Tic Tacs, but it made for stultifying reading.]

Everything was listed that way. His key ring, each of its keys described in mind-numbing detail. His wedding ring, which he kept on his key chain because he could not bear to lock it away in some box where he could not look at it or touch it. There was a notation that it had several scratches on its outer surface and the inscription _HB to AH, now and forever,_ on its inner surface. The battery in his watch had been removed and its make and model listed.

His cell had been stripped of its battery by Cornsilk, or that would have been inventoried, too. Fortunately, Thaddeus Bell had already returned it to him.

His underwear. The contents of his pockets. Tie. The coat to a suit that no longer existed, its pants shredded and caked with mud.

His credentials.

His weapons.

He strapped on his main holster, replaced the rounds in the magazine and shot it home. Slid the Glock into its holster. "You know not to mess with this?" he said to Jack as he snapped the flap closed.

Jack seemed absorbed in something that involved animated dogs and live-action kids on bicycles. He glanced at his father's gun without interest. "Yes, 'course," he answered. "Not till you teach me how to shoot."

"Not ever," Aaron said. "Not even after you learn to shoot. This is my work gun."

"OK."

Hotchner dropped his second gun, his ankle holster and his spare magazines in his go-bag, initialed the last boxes on the inventory and signed the bottom of the page. Then he lay back again, replacing the battery in his phone.

"Good kid you've got there," Rossi said with a smile.

Hotch resisted the temptation to drag Jack away from the TV show so he could hug him again. "Pretty wonderful," he agreed.

He rolled to his side so he could stow his credentials in one back pocket of his jeans, then to the other to put away his wallet.

And the damn Tic-Tacs.

There was a knock at the door, and Rossi let a fully-clothed Reid, Prentiss, Will, and JJ with an armload of media into the room. All of them were dressed down, way down. Hotchner could not recall the last time he had seen Spencer Reid in jeans and a nylon jacket, and _never_ in a Lady Antebellum tee shirt, but there he was.

Emily Prentiss, looking divinely nerdy in a ponytail and glasses, and walking unsteadily–

_And I could do nothing to save her_

–wore bib overalls and a baggy matching linen jacket that seemed utterly foreign and out of character on her. It looked beige to Hotch but was probably called something ridiculous like "faded flowers" or "winter wheat."

JJ looked at Hotchner for a few seconds. "It's wonderful to see you," she said softly. She looked wholly inappropriate in tight cargo crops, a halter top, and a denim jacket, a pair of sunglasses in her hair. She leaned over and carefully reached for his upper arm, as if wondering where she could touch him that wouldn't hurt. He started to extend his hand, remembered the welts at the last minute, and just lay there (_like a freaking sick sheep _) while she patted his biceps.

"Good to see you, too, JJ," he said.

"New marching orders," she said brightly, and beamed at Aaron. "From all the way to the top. Sir, you'll be pleased to learn that you're appropriately dressed. Except for the gun.

"There are currently 41 various federal agents in town," she said, "not counting us. And nobody is counting us. We're not officially here. About half of the DEA and DHS and FBI and BATF are out there being all official. The rest of them – and all of us – are casual only. Sloppy will, repeat, _will_ be tolerated. No visible weapons, but you still have to be armed. Even our illustrious Unit Chief who has never spent a day of his life under cover is ordered not to look like, and I quote, 'another goddamn agent.'"

"From all the way to the top?" Hotchner echoed, zooming in immediately on the most important point.

JJ cleared her throat, glanced behind her to ensure that the door was firmly closed, and said, "Wait until you see Chief Strauss in a Wal-Mart polyester pant suit, sir."

Rossi grinned hugely and Prentiss snickered, winced, and looked away.

He tried not to laugh – it was unprofessional and it would probably hurt – but the same drugs that made it possible for him to think and move around had also readjusted the governor on his self control. "Christ," he chuckled and groaned simultaneously. "Is it too late for me to go back to Gid – to Bell's?"

"You might want to send Jack over to my room," JJ said. "He can watch TV, or Will brought our Wii."

"Wii!" Jack caroled, bouncing upright. "I mean – will you be OK, Daddy?"

Hotchner touched the boy's face. For some reason he was unable to keep his hands off his son. "Sure, Doc. I think I can manage for a while on my own. Just come back when you're done."

"Promise." Jack eyed his father fiercely. "You good?"

Aaron tried to send his heart out through his smile. "I'm good."

When the boy got to the door to join Will, he turned around and surveyed the adults with a solemn expression. "And don't let him get up," he ordered them. "He isn't spozed to stand up until Saturday."

"We'll certainly make sure he behaves," Rossi assured Jack.

Father and son exchanged thumbs-up and Jack vanished.

JJ sat down at the table by the window and set up a laptop. "Thank God this place has wireless," she said. "Cable's OK, but–" She scrambled for an outlet. "Garcia's dying to see you, Hotch. She – she just really needs to see you," she finished awkwardly.

Aaron sighed. "I gather she has seen some video she didn't like?"

JJ's lips tightened. "So far we've all managed to avoid it but David and Garcia, neither of whom knew to be looking for it."

"She saw the thing with your feet," Reid volunteered. When Rossi and JJ glared at him, he said, "What? I just thought he would want to know."

For an instant, the pain lanced through the soles of his feet as though Opie and his pals were right there, right that moment, pinning him face-down on the carpet. He managed not to gasp, but he was unable to prevent the grimace that twisted his features.

Rossi kept his gaze lowered to a small stack of folders on his knee. "Did you ever see Opie Martin?" he asked.

"See him? No."

"Want to?"

Hotchner shrugged. Another stupid movement idea.

Rossi held up a photo of a moon-faced, sullen young man with dark circles under his eyes. "There he is," he said. "Or was. Oscar Pendleton Martin. He was twenty-six. Dropped out of Indiana University, geology major. Came home to help his papa spread the hate. They pulled the plug on him at around three this afternoon."

Hotchner studied the picture and frowned at the man whom he had called Asshole. Oddly, he felt no anger, no hatred. It was just a picture of some guy who was dead now. "He reminds me – there's a facial resemblance to John Wayne Gacy," he said. "Not strong–"

Rossi studied the picture and nodded. "I see what you're saying. The eyes, shape of the jaw, especially. A big guy, six-eight and chunky. Took a lot of shrapnel to the head and upper body, and something about the size of a tent-stake got him right at the base of the brain."

Did he dare ask the next question?

"How did you identify him as Cornsilk?"

"He was the first person we identified," Rossi said. "Prentiss described his approximate height and weight to Chief Jaworski, and she pulled the file out pretty much immediately. She was going to do the audio equivalent of a lay-down, since she had tape of previous interrogations, but – it turned out to be unnecessary."

Another stab of shame. "That's right – you were the other person who–" Aaron gathered his courage. "Who saw some video," he finished. "Which part did you get treated to?"

Rossi shrugged nervously. "The, ah, part that wasn't feet."

"Which part that wasn't feet?"

A quiet gasp. "There was more than just feet-and-something else? I mean, besides the Gideon – _Damn it_, I mean Tad Bell – thing?"

_Please don't make me admit to all this stuff..._

"Aside from Gid – Thaddeus, there were, four, maybe five situations with Opie."

"_Maybe_ five?"

"Depends on how you're counting," Hotch sighed. "Please don't make me go into all of it."

"You know eventually you'll have to–"

"Actually, no." Hotchner's voice was firm. "Opie is dead. Danny is dead. I understand that the Task Force has released information that some agents had been taken hostage, but hasn't released any names, numbers, or other details. I don't think I'll be needed as much of a witness."

"So far, that's true."

"Here we go," JJ said, turning the laptop toward Hotch and switching on the web cam.

Penelope Garcia pasted a determined smile on her face. He could see her horror, her pity. He could see that she recognized that he didn't want either of those emotions. "Hey, good evening, _mon capitaine_," she said in an almost believable chirpy voice. "It's good to see you."

"Good to see you, too, Garcia," he replied. "Thanks for everything you've done."

Her eyes flickered across his face. She flinched once, then pumped steroids into her smile. "Ready for an update, Scary Spice?" she asked.

A little afraid of the answer, he asked carefully, "Since when am I Scary Spice?"

"Since my amazing Chocolate Thunder is at the hospital talking to Chipsey, sir. And it's easier for me to smile if I call you Scary Spice. You have to admit, sir, that none of the other Spice Girls is much of a fit with your personality."

_Huh._

Super profiler that he was, it had never occurred to him that her outrageous borderline-sexual-harassment dialogs with Morgan were, like her feathers and tchotchkes and crap, a survival mechanism to help her face horrors that would otherwise paralyze her.

He stared up at the ceiling, wondering what other obvious things he had managed to miss about the people he loved most: his son and his team.

"Sir?"

"Garcia, if anyone ever tries to quote me on this I will deny it even under oath, but I'm good with being Scary Spice in this particular situation."


End file.
